“So how’s work?” Amy says.
“Ugh, don’t ask,” I say, the freezing air stinging the back of my throat. It’s much colder than I’d realized.
“Oh no!” Amy stops midstride. She always hyperreacts to anything remotely negative. Well, anything except her husband, apparently.
“No, no, it’s nothing,” I say. “Just one of those days.”
We keep plodding along, the run starting to feel good as the minutes pass by, like it always does. Amy begins telling me about the house her sister is renovating in North Carolina. Amy’s older sisters are southern supermommies, and whenever Amy talks about them, the stories always involve either pregnancy (I can never remember how many children each has, but it always feels like one of them is about to push out another one) or whatever Junior League/ college sorority/ church event they’re currently planning.
I’m half paying attention—I’m just too brain-dead to give more than that—but I notice that the house reno Amy’s describing—a sunroom, a butler’s pantry—sounds like more than a little upgrade. “So what does Celia’s husband do, anyway, that they can afford all of this?”
“Oh,” Amy says. “Something financial. He’s some sort of accountant, I think. To be honest, I don’t really know. But Celia and Todd are just about the most frugal people I know. They’re like the kind of people who wash and reuse Ziploc bags. They probably have bags and bags of cash buried in their backyard.”
“How many kids do they have now?”
“Four boys! And one on the way!” Amy says. “I’m sooo excited. She finally relented and found out the gender like we’ve begged her to do every time. It’s a girl! I keep referring to her as Baby Amy!” She laughs at her own joke, but I’m still focused on the money part of the conversation.
“He must do some serious accounting work if they can afford for her to stay home with five kids and renovate a house.”
“I guess.”
I can tell from her succinct response that I’ve been as nosy as I can be. It just kills me to hear about people whose lifestyles require way more cash than mine (I mean, five kids on one income?) who don’t seem to have any problem funding it. And I’ve met Amy’s sister Celia. She looks so much like Amy—the same thick, mahogany-colored hair, the same richly freckled skin—but has a totally different aesthetic. She looks like a highlighted, manicured, fashiony-handbag-carrying woman who isn’t afraid to spend some money, no matter what Amy says about her Ziploc-bag-washing habits. Meanwhile, I have no one but myself to take care of, I live in an inherited home with no mortgage to pay, and I’m at the point where I can’t afford the T-shirt sale at Target. It makes me feel so far behind, like such a loser.
“Are you excited about our Palm Beach trip?” Amy says. It’s no fault of hers, of course, but given what I’m thinking about, the question stings.
Every February for the past nine years, Amy, Kate, and I have spent a weekend in Palm Beach at Kate’s family’s house there. The first time we went, for Kate’s twenty-sixth birthday, she trotted us all over town. We followed her to the International Polo Club, where we gawked at the impossibly handsome Argentinean players as if we were cavewomen seeing modern man for the first time. She took us to the boutiques on Worth Avenue, where Amy and I inevitably ended up slumped in seats outside of the dressing rooms while Kate tried on clothing with price tags the size of what most of us might expect to pay for a new car. As we’ve gotten older—and, frankly, lazier—the trip has assumed a luxuriously slothful routine: We spend all day drinking shameful quantities of margaritas by the pool, nap in the chaise lounges surrounding it, and change out of our swimsuits only when it becomes absolutely necessary to leave the house for more provisions. The trip is next week.
I know that I shouldn’t be dropping everything to jaunt off to Florida any more than I should be running out to buy myself a diamond necklace, but last fall, Kate went ahead and bought all of our tickets, saying in her typically nonchalant way that it was an early Christmas present and that she’d paid for the trip with miles anyway, so we shouldn’t think too much of it. I told her at the time that I really should skip this year because it’s such a bad time for me to be away from work, but she just looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. “You can’t be away from work, Waverly? Do you think I can really be away from the campaign? This is tradition. You have to go.” There were a million things I wanted to say in response but I didn’t because part of me agreed with her—it was tradition. Amy didn’t even skip the year that Emma was born. And, hell, a couple of days away might give me a little perspective.
We turn uphill, and Amy, who never has difficulty talking no matter how challenging our runs get, is telling me how worried she is about being away from Emma. “Mike is such a good dad, though, that I know she’ll be fine,” she says.
I bite my tongue.
“The other night after we got home, Wave, it was so sweet: Emma was still awake—the sitter said she couldn’t sleep—and Mike went into her room and read to her for over an hour. He took warm milk to her and everything. I swear he loves that kid more than he’s ever loved anything.”
“So he recovered from the dinner conversation, then?” I blurt out.
“What?” She pulls a tissue out of the waistband of her running tights to blow her nose as we jog.
“He was just a little…wound up,” I say, wishing I didn’t feel the need to be so diplomatic. Just say it, Waverly, I think. He was a jerk. He insulted my guests. I’m pissed at you for not acknowledging it. I don’t believe that you don’t see what everyone else who meets him sees.
“Oh, you know how Mike can be when he doesn’t agree with something,” she says nonchalantly, then blows her nose again.
No way! Does she really think I’m buying this?
“I can’t wait to feel that Florida sun,” she says, changing the subject. “It’s going to be so nice to get out of this weather.” Before I know it, she’s launched into a monologue about the beach, the new bathing suit she ordered online, and the sunscreen she needs to remember to buy, and I’ve lost my opportunity to steer the conversation back toward Mike. I look at my watch. We’ve been moving for only ten minutes but it feels like it’s been an hour. I’m too tired to run, too tired to listen to Amy talk about nothing, too tired for my own thoughts. I set my eyes on the horizon and keep pushing forward. It feels nearly impossible.
CHAPTER SIX
I was seventeen the first time I came to the Palm Beach house, for Easter with Kate’s family, though I suppose that implies that we actually spent any time with her parents. The only time we were actually in the same room with them was at the Sunday brunch her mother threw for sixty of Palm Beach’s finest. I’ve been to the house almost every year since, but the shock of seeing such luxury never wears off. Unlike Kate and Brendan’s home in Maple Hill—a rambling farmhouse that looks expensively rustic in that Kennebunkport, Ralph Lauren way—the beach house is an ornate Mediterranean-style place that spreads itself out along the coast like a cat stretching in a pool of sunlight. Calling it a “beach house” is an understatement in and of itself, but like all good WASPs, Kate was raised to trivialize her trappings. Her five-carat antique engagement ring is “a hand-me-down from Brendan’s grandmother,” the Gauguin in her foyer is “a little something my mother fell in love with on vacation,” and the beach house, all twenty thousand square feet of it, is “our beach getaway.”
No, it isn’t just a beach house, I think, lying on my stomach on a chair in the courtyard and watching the hibiscus planted around the perimeter softly flutter in the afternoon breeze. This place deserves a loftier word. Estate. Or mansion, obviously. No, it’s a manse, I think, repeating the word to myself. Manse. Manse. It sounds stranger each time I say it.
I flip over, take another sip of my second margarita of the day, and glance over at Kate, who’s immersed in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Amy’s scanning the paperback she bought at the airport, thumbing halfheartedly through the pages. She looks over at me
and tosses it onto the Spanish tile. “I can’t concentrate,” she says, fiddling with the strap of her gingham tankini. “I’m dying to call home to check on Emma.”
“Then do it,” I say, turning onto my side and propping myself up on my elbow. “I called the bakery before we were out of baggage claim. This one”—I point my chin toward Kate—“this one’s phone rings so much that you’d think she was running an escort service.”
“I heard that,” Kate mutters, flipping pages.
Amy picks up her phone and looks at the screen.
“What time is it?” I say, pressing my fingers into my thighs to see if I’ve really gotten as much sun as it feels like. White spots appear under my fingertips.
“Four thirty.” Amy flops back onto her chair and looks up at the cloudless sky. “Mike said he was going to take Emma into the city—to the zoo, if it wasn’t too cold. To the children’s museum, otherwise.” She sighs. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to be away from her this year. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never done this before.” She glances at me and chews nervously at her lip. “Anyway, I’m sure everything’s fine. Emma is the apple of his eye. He’s probably more careful with her than I am. If there’s one thing you can say about Mike Rutherford, it’s that he’s a good father.”
I hear Kate huff behind me. This is the first time his name’s come up.
“I’m not going to call,” she declares. “I’ll wait till later, after he’s put her to bed. That will be better. He’ll have the day behind him; I won’t be interrupting them.” She glances over at me again and smiles apologetically. I can see my reflection in her sunglasses. Ugh, a bakery owner in a bathing suit, I think. She shakes her hair off of her face and readjusts her sunglasses. “Sorry,” she says. “I’ll shut up now.”
Please do, I think. I normally enjoy Amy’s stories about Emma—and there is no shortage of them—but it’s not as if she’s never been away from the child before. I mean, hell, she’s with her father. And it’s just three days.
She puts her phone down on the small glass table between us and shoves it toward me, as if distancing herself will ease the temptation to call. “Come swim with me.”
I turn back onto my stomach, hooking my finger under one of the leg holes of my trusty black one-piece and pulling it down over my behind. “I’m too tired.” I squint up at her. “Ask Kate.”
“Ask me what?” Kate says, putting down her magazine and looking at us over the top of her oversized sunglasses.
“Get in the water with me?”
Kate shrugs. “Yeah, okay.” She tosses her magazine aside and takes off her wide-brimmed straw hat, then places it carefully on her chair, as if it it’s one of the Fabergé eggs her mother’s decorator arranged on a shelf in the powder room.
I watch as they glide down the tiled steps into the water, the sky a perfect cerulean blue behind them. They could be an ad for a beach resort—Kate, in her white bikini, for a sexy exclusive island, and Amy, with her high ponytail, for a family-friendly, sandcastle-building-contest kind of place. Once waist deep, they both walk in slow circles, combing their fingers along the surface as they get used to the temperature.
I close my eyes and try to rest. I want so badly to empty my head, to officially relax and forget reality for a few days. But wouldn’t you know, when I checked my voicemail after we landed, my one and only message was from my accountant. While Amy and Kate were excitedly stripping off their coats and turning their faces toward the sun, I was listening to a somber message telling me that it’s imperative that I freeze my salary for a while.
Who would have thought that my former career as a public school teacher would make for a lavish life compared to the one I have working at my dream job? I was a good teacher—maybe not teacher-of-the-year good, but good enough that when June rolled around, I always found a letter or two on my desk from the sweet students who felt compelled to tell me that my class was their favorite. Every once in a while, I dig the letters out and read them to remind myself that my adult life has not been a complete catastrophe. I wonder what the chances would be of my old boss taking me back? I’m sure that my landlord would be thrilled to rent the bakery space out to a Panera or a Starbucks.
I turn over again—I just can’t get comfortable—and try to distract myself from my self-flagellation by listening to Amy and Kate chat.
“So it must be nice to get away from the campaign for a few days?” Amy says.
Kate readjusts the messy bun on top of her head, the muscles in her slender arms flexing as she does it. “You have no idea,” she says, a little too harshly. She sounds vaguely condescending, as if it would actually be impossible under any circumstance for Amy to understand. Sometimes, watching them, I feel the way that a mother must feel watching two of her children interact, hoping and praying that they will just get along. As different as Kate and Amy are, it shouldn’t surprise me that the closeness they’d once shared was short-lived. It especially shouldn’t surprise me now. They exist in such dramatically different galaxies, though equally seamless perfect worlds. Gorgeous Wife Kate. Adorable Mommy Amy. And then there’s me…broke, unmarried, childless baker. I force myself to bury the thought before I go further.
“So it’s tough being away from Emma?” I hear Kate ask.
Even with the sun’s glare marring my vision, I can see Amy’s face light up. The question’s obviously surprised her as much as it does me. Kate isn’t interested in hearing about people’s kids any more than she’s interested in clipping coupons.
I watch Amy get riled up all over again, telling Kate how much she wants to call home. Larry has occasionally asked me what the two of them talk about when the three of us get together. “Nothing of consequence” is what I usually say. They connect on the things that don’t have much to do with either of their lives—celebrity gossip, movies they’ve seen, the news. He met them just when their close-ish friendship was fizzling out, so he has a hard time believing that they’ve ever been good friends at all. More than once, he’s asked me why they even bother to keep in such good touch. “Because they have a history,” I say. “And because I make them.” Someday, I hope they’ll find their way back to each other.
They initially started to drift apart when Amy got engaged. Kate made no secret of her disapproval of Mike. She thought that he wasn’t good enough for Amy, she said, but I think that the real problem was that Mike stood up to Kate like no other man—or woman, frankly—that I’d ever witnessed. When they were in the same room, Kate physically tensed up, her aggression as obvious as a cat’s when its hair stands up on its back. It didn’t help that when Mike wasn’t around, Amy was usually talking about how wonderful he was and the happy future they were planning.
Amy’s bachelorette party sealed my suspicions that Kate might actually be jealous of the stable family life that Amy had ahead of her—the kind that Kate had never experienced. We were in New Orleans, it was nearly five o’clock in the morning, and we’d just returned home from the bars and settled into our shared queen bed in our hotel room when I figured it out. “Wave, is that what you want?” she slurred, her back to me.
“What?”
“Do you want the kind of life Amy’s about to have with him?”
“You mean to get married and have kids?” There had been a stretch of time during our evening in the French Quarter when Amy told the group—most of them friends from her UNC sorority—about how they hoped to get started on children right away.
“Yeah, to settle like that. To be so…so…” She sighed. “So ordinary.”
I knew from all of the time I’d spent at Kate’s house that ordinary was the adjective that her mother most often employed when she criticized something.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. Larry and I were newly dating. I couldn’t picture getting married any more than I could see myself becoming a Vegas showgirl.
“Well.” Kate sighed. “I think Amy’s going to be dead from boredom before her thirtieth birthday. It’s too bad. She�
�s so much fun without him.”
I thought for a moment about asking Kate straightaway if she was jealous. It was the kind of question that I knew would set her off—Kate Berkshire didn’t envy anyone—and the timing wasn’t exactly perfect. It was one of the few (brief) moments when she wasn’t dating somebody. But before I could get up the nerve to actually open my mouth and spit out the words, I heard her begin to softly snore beside me.
I shield my eyes from the sun with my hands and watch them. The blue backdrop of the sky above them and the water beneath them makes them look like they’re floating in midair. Amy is still talking—about how applying to preschool these days is like going through college admissions. Kate picks at her manicure, entirely somewhere else. When she looks up, she catches my eye. “Can you grab my phone?” she mouths.
I roll my eyes and get up to fetch it.
Later that night, we sit on the patio off of the kitchen in a different set of chaise lounges, these ones upholstered in some sort of sumptuous cottony fabric that feels like the best combination of cashmere and an old worn-in T-shirt. Amy and I are both still in our swimsuits. On a table centered between us lies the detritus of our dinner—chips, dips, and cold fried chicken that I picked up at Publix.
“Tell me again why we only do this once a year?” I say, looking out at the ocean beyond the terra-cotta railing, taking in the reflection of the moon over the water. The Atlantic glistens like it’s been sprinkled with thousands and thousands of diamonds. The air smells clean and sweet, like just breathing in the breeze could add ten years to your life. I am finally, finally loosening up a little bit, thanks to the four margaritas I’ve consumed since arriving here and the glass of champagne that I’m now working on.
How Lucky You Are (9781455518548) Page 5