Hope in a Jar

by Beth Harbison

  Finally she decided to just pound her way home on foot, despite the fact that, at that point, she’d been at work for more than twelve hours, awake for more than fourteen, and she was completely exhausted.

  Walking felt better than standing curbside with her arm in the air, trying to stop a cab that might or might not come.

  So she walked. It felt good to be alone and perhaps a little bit aimless. And although she felt safe, despite multiple CNN reports to the contrary, she was not content. This—the bright night, the polluted air, the blast of cab horns even at ten P.M.—wasn’t what she wanted for the rest of her life.

  She longed for peace. As a child, she’d had a good dose of it—at that time, the suburbs of D.C. were quiet, even dark and star filled, and she’d spent many balmy nights enjoying the quiet and the stars. Just enough to make her want more, enough to make her imagine more.

  By the time she was a teenager and read books by Beryl Markham and Isak Dinesen and even Ernest Hemingway on the dark, mysterious continent of Africa, she wanted to escape into that faraway land. But that was a secret fantasy. She knew, even then, that it wasn’t practical. She knew she needed to get a degree in some sort of business administration so that she could be financially independent.

  In other words, she wanted to be the opposite of her mother.

  She never wanted to end up like her mother.

  Yet she had, in a way. Like her mother, she was living in circumstances that she didn’t want. She was living a life she didn’t particularly like.

  And it was all because instead of running toward a future she believed she’d love, she’d backed away from a future she feared.

  Now she was living it.

  So she’d succeeded in what she tried: She was financially independent. She was not afraid. She was not locked into a marriage or a relationship by a fear of being alone.

  But she wasn’t happy.

  Something needed to change and she was pretty sure that something was everything.

  Twenty-two

  Boys go sweet on girls who go soft.

  —ad for Love’s Baby Soft

  The drive home from New York flew by. For some reason, Allie kept finding herself thinking about Marianne’s revelation at Weight Watchers.

  She wanted her own revelation. Some simple, correctable reason for everything that ever went wrong in her life. Including, but not limited to, getting fat.

  Allie, of course, had rejected the notion that everyone who overeats does it because of some deep psychological trauma, but at the same time, she wondered why it was so hard for her to just whip up some willpower to lose the weight.

  For her, that seemed to be the question.

  And as she drove past the newly refurbished rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike—each one offering something more delicious than the last: Nathan’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Roy Rogers—she realized that she had trouble sticking to a diet because she resented the fact that she had to.

  One thing Allie had always been able to take for granted when she was growing up was that she was strong and fit. She had a pile of Presidential Physical Fitness Awards in her School Days memorabilia books, and she hadn’t even been aware she was being tested.

  She’d been on the swim team, the softball team, she’d played tennis, ridden horses, and every time she’d gotten a whim to change her room around—which was often as a teenager—she’d been able to move her bed, her dresser, and everything else in her room, without any real effort at all. And certainly without help.

  What had changed? She’d kept on eating the way she al ways had, moving the way she always had, she swam in the summer, walked year-round, so what the hell was up with the extra pounds?

  And why should she have to work extra hard and give up the undeniable pleasure of food just to lose them?

  The answer, which came to her as she willfully passed the Nathan’s, etc., at the rest stops, was that she just did. She just had to. Life wasn’t always fair, and this was a good example of that.

  There wasn’t anything physically wrong with her, there was no mysterious reason she had packed on the pounds, and thus there was no magic pill that would melt them off. She knew that because just following the basic diet and exercise principles of Weight Watchers had made her lose weight at a completely predictable and average rate.

  Life was unfair and this was one perfect illustration of that.

  In a way, this epiphany came as something of a relief to her. Thinking there was something physically wrong, or that this was somehow out of her control, was a huge burden.

  Now she knew she could make the right changes just by taking one sensible step after another in the right direction. That was all. It was plodding, perhaps, and certainly slow at times.

  But it was the same method that had won the race for the turtle.

  So it was an approach she was going to take in all of life.

  Which was the thought that led her, inevitably, back to Noah. Because Noah was never far from her thoughts—he never had been. Two years ago, if she’d seen the president shopping at George town Park—which she did—the first person she’d call was Noah. If she saw a “Where are they now?” article on the cast of The Love Boat, she’d tell Noah. If she got a flat tire or if her fuel line filter got clogged—again, true story—the person she would call was Noah.

  So it wasn’t new for her that she would be thinking about Noah during an ordinary drive on an ordinary road.

  What was new was the way she was thinking about Noah. Because these days her thoughts were tinged with longing and loneliness. Was it simply because he was suddenly unavailable? No. She didn’t even need to think about that—it wasn’t a matter of him becoming the unattainable dream.

  It was a matter of her coming to understand if she wanted to keep him around—and there was no doubt at all that she did—she needed to tell him how much she loved him.

  Then, if he didn’t want to be with her, she’d accept it. Not gracefully, probably. There would be whining, and a lot of self-pity, and there was a distinct possibility that her next few weigh-ins would be ugly, but she would accept it.

  With that thought guiding her, she drove straight to Noah’s house despite the fact that by the time she parallel parked right outside his building—a miracle in and of itself—it was almost midnight.

  She didn’t let herself stop and wonder what she’d do if Vickie was there. If she did, she’d turn back and go home and she didn’t want to do that.

  So she marched up the stairs to his door and rang the bell, then waited, with a pounding heart, until he opened it, ruffled and sleepy looking.

  “Are you alone?” she asked.

  “Yes. What the—”

  “Good.” She pushed past him and kicked the door closed behind her, right out of his hand. “We need to talk.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, then shook his bleary head. “I guess not, huh? Dumb question. What’s wrong?”

  “I want coffee,” she said. “Do you want coffee? Do you have anything besides that instant crap?”

  “No. And no.”

  She didn’t want instant-coffee breath. This was a talk that required confidence. “Then I’ll get water. Do you want some?”

  “Does it matter what I say at this point?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then sure.” He gestured weakly toward the kitchen and went to the couch, where he plunked down like a rag doll. “What are you doing here, Allison? I thought we weren’t going to see each other for a while.”

  “Yeah.” She dropped some ice cubes into a glass and took water from the tap. “About that. What the hell does it mean? Did Vickie tell you that you’re not allowed to see me?”

  He gave a faint smile. “After all these years, do I seem like the kind of guy who’s going to let someone tell him how to feel? Besides, I don’t think Vickie’s thinking about you nearly as much as you think about her.”

  “Oh.” For a moment she was offended, but she had bigger fish to fry. “
Then it was just you.”

  He nodded. “Just me.”

  “After all these years, our friendship is over. Kaput. What the fuck is that? Who breaks up with friends?” She sat down next to him. “I don’t even know if that’s the right expression. Do you break up? Or is it more like severing ties? Or maybe—”

  She didn’t finish her thought because he cupped his hand around her face and drew her to him in a kiss.

  At first she was shocked into stillness, but that only lasted about two seconds, after which she dropped her glass of water on the floor and coiled her arms around Noah, pulling him closer. Or her closer. Or both. It didn’t matter; his mouth moved against hers in a way that sent desire like she’d never felt racing through her.

  How had she missed out on this for so long?

  He moved his hands up her back, his touch definite. There was no question in it. When he traced down her spine, it tickled, and she arched toward him. When she did, he unhooked her bra with one quick flick of his fingers.

  Her inhibitions fell apart just as easily.

  He spanned his palms against her, which pressed her body against his. She went willingly: If she could have, she would have climbed right into his soul.

  “Noah,” she breathed, as he traced his mouth along her jaw and down her throat.

  His only answer was to kiss her mouth.

  He was as hungry for this as she was.

  Noah yanked at Allie’s shirt, ripping the buttons off. They ticked to the floor like little raindrops, as his hand moved across her skin.

  Then, suddenly, they both drew back and looked at each other.

  It was the obvious time for one, or both, of them to give a final warning, to point out that if they didn’t stop now they were going to tumble over the point of no return.

  But neither of them spoke. There was no need.

  Instead they both smiled, and crashed back into each other, their need even more urgent than before.

  They didn’t stop.

  Not until much, much later, when the sun was beginning to peek out on the horizon through the east windows.

  “I should go,” Allie said, but what she meant was that she should stay. She didn’t want to move. It would be easy to imagine lying right here, with Noah, forever.

  Never in her life had anything felt so right or so completely unconflicted.

  Until he said, “You probably should.”

  Even though she was tired, a rush of adrenaline shot through her like a bullet. “What, no thank you, ma’am?”

  He laughed. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “That things changed last night.” He sat up, and the pathetic “blanket” she had made of his shirt dropped off his shoulders. “I have business I need to attend to now.”

  “Business.” She rolled her eyes. “Try again, Noah. The way you really talk to me.”

  “I need to talk to Vickie.” He yawned and then dropped his face into his hands. “I needed to anyway. This isn’t about you. Or it’s not because of you. It’s because that whole thing wasn’t right anyway.”

  “Tell me about it. I don’t know how you lasted as long as you did without killing her.”

  He looked at her seriously. “It’s complicated.”

  “How can it be complicated, Noah? You haven’t even been seeing her for that long.”

  He stared straight ahead. “Three or four months can be a long time.”

  She laughed. “On what calendar? Noah Haller, you and I are both entering what we used to think of as parent age. Ten years fly by like two months. How in the world can you say that three or four months can be a long time?”

  He met her eyes. “Trust me.”

  “Okay, fine.” She shrugged. “I guess if spending fifteen minutes talking to Vickie seems like forever, dating her for three months could seem even more like forever.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He clasped and unclasped his hands in his lap. “The relationship went further than I expected it to.”

  This was making no sense. “What are you talking about, Noah?” Genuine fear coursed through her. “Did you get married in some Vegas chapel or something?”

  He hesitated just long enough for her imagination to get on a horse and gallop off for several seconds.

  “No,” he said finally. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “There’s a problem. A . . . condition you need to know about. I should have told you before”—he gestured behind them—“we did that.”

  “You didn’t seem to have any conditions, Noah.” Her joke fell flat.

  She always joked in tense situations and those jokes almost always fell flat.

  “Here’s the thing.” He tried again. He didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m trying to do the right thing. That’s why I said we shouldn’t see each other. It wasn’t for Vickie, it was for me. And for you.” He met her eyes. “For you.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not seeing it, Noah. How the hell is cutting me out of your life some big favor to me?”

  “My life comes with a lot of shit you might not want to deal with,” he said.

  “Like what? Architectural talk? Historical preservation conditions?” She was flummoxed. “The fact that you snore? Hate vanilla ice cream? Pee all over the toilet seat when you stumble in the bathroom in the middle of the night? What on earth could you be hiding, Noah, that I haven’t seen at some point over the past twenty years?”

  “A pregnant ex-girlfriend,” he answered so quietly that for a moment or two she languished in the idea that she might have actually misheard him.

  “I’m sorry?”

  He met her eyes now and nodded, his expression so somber she couldn’t help understanding him without doubt or question. “Vickie’s pregnant.”

  Twenty-three

  They’re not as innocent as they seem.

  —ad for Maybelline Kissing Slicks

  “Oh, my God,” was all Allie could say when Olivia answered the phone. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “What is it?” Olivia’s nerves were instantly taut. “What’s wrong?”

  “Noah.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yes. Well, no, of course, but he’s not hurt or maimed. He’s just . . . screwed.”

  Olivia, who had been pacing in front of the window holding the phone with white knuckles, finally took a breath and sat down. “Okay, I could have done without the scare, but why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “All right.” She heard Allie take a deep breath. “Here goes. I drove home from your house yesterday, and I wasn’t going to go to him, I really wasn’t, but in the end I did. I just couldn’t stop myself. I had to see him.”

  “So far I understand completely. Was he glad to see you?”

  “Yes! I mean, he took some persuading, but we finally broke through some of those stupid barriers and were able to talk honestly. He told me he’s loved me for years.”

  “I knew it! I told you that, too.”

  “Liv, it was hard enough to believe coming from him. There was no way I could have invested myself in a secondhand report.”

  “Good point. I’m with you on that. So where does the bad part come in?”

  Allie made a shuddering sound. “Oh, it’s coming. Anyway, we talked and finally got it all out in the open, and . . . things happened.”

  “Say no more.”

  “Thank you. But.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah, but afterward when we’re talking about how he’s got to dump Vickie, he lays it on me.”

  “What?”

  “Vickie’s pregnant.”

  Olivia had heard the expression my heart skipped a beat all her life but until now it had never actually happened to her. This was so completely unexpected that if Allie had told her Noah was planning to have a sex-change operation, she couldn’t have been more surprised. “How the hell is that possible? What is he, sixte
en? Didn’t he take some damn precautions?”

  “All things I wanted to know,” Allie agreed. “And he said he was extremely careful, and always, um, confirmed that there had been no mishaps afterward, but somehow something, well, slipped through the cracks.”

  “Really.” Always really careful. That sounded like Noah. Accidents happened, of course, they happened every day. But Noah had managed to go, what, twenty years—maybe more—without having one, but now suddenly, when he was with the most manipulative woman Olivia had ever known, his fail-safe methods failed.

  This didn’t add up.

  “How pregnant?” Olivia asked.

  “What do you mean, how pregnant? Completely. One hundred percent.”

  “I mean how far along.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Maybe we should.”

  “Why?”

  Olivia thought fast. What she was going to say had the potential to be complete slander to Vickie Freedman, but, on the other hand, if she was right, it might save Noah.

  And Allie.

  “What are you getting at?” Allie prodded.

  Olivia took a deep breath, as some yoga instructor had taught her years back. “You can’t tell Noah. Not yet, I mean. Before you fly off the handle, or even believe me—because I am not sure of any of this—you and I have to formulate a plan.”

  “You’ve got me completely confused.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Okay, here it is, I’m just going to say it: I think Vickie’s sleeping with someone else.”

  Allie gasped. “You do? Who? How do you know?”

  Olivia explained to her about Vickie and Todd Reigerberg’s strange interaction the night of the reunion.

  “Lucy Lee is married to Todd Reigerberg?” Allie asked when she’d heard it all. “And Vickie is sleeping with him? Are you sure? Todd Reigerberg?”

  “Yes. Why is he any more surprising than anyone else?”

  “I guess he’s not, he’s just such a cheesy anchor on what has to be the lowest-rent news show on the East Coast.”