Fly Away Home

by Jennifer Weiner

  “And Richard?” Sylvie ventured.

  “Him, too, I suppose. But I’m your mother, so you’re my concern. I want you to do what’s right for Sylvie.”

  Sylvie nodded. What was right for Sylvie? What would feel best, what would sustain her over the years she had left? “I want Richard,” she said. Selma nodded, unsurprised. “But I want things to be different. I don’t want to be the kind of wife I was before. I don’t want that kind of marriage again.”

  Selma rocked. “Would Richard be happy with a different kind of marriage? A different kind of wife?”

  “I don’t know,” Sylvie said. Maybe she was valuing herself, and the pleasure of her company, too highly, but she thought that Richard wanted her back; that he was a little lost without her, and maybe lonely, too. She also suspected that he was also feeling so guilty that he’d agree to any conditions she cared to impose. She could tell him, for example, that she would no longer make public appearances. It was too much pressure, having to stand beside him and submit herself to the world’s scrutiny, to the bitches of Boca Raton and elsewhere who’d look at her face and her clothes and the body they covered and find it all wanting. No more rallies, no more picnics, no more parades. No more fund-raising, no more wasted hours with groomed, toned, coiffed ladies who’d see her as nothing more than the afternoon’s entertainment, who’d whisper about how much her clothes had cost and who was doing her hair. She’d spend part of her time up here, in Connecticut, by the ocean, maybe with Richard, if he could spare a day or two each week. Ceil would come for a long weekend and they could continue their cooking lessons in person. Come summer, she’d walk by the ocean, maybe she’d buy a kayak. She and Ceil, the girls and their children, could charter a boat and catch fresh fish and cook them out on the grill. She’d throw parties for the whole family, even crazy cousin Jan; she’d redecorate, repaint, turn the house into a place where everyone was welcome, where everyone had a bed to sleep in and a place at the table.

  “And the other fellow? The Simmons boy?”

  Sylvie sighed. “I don’t know.” Maybe that was a better answer. Tim was solid, and steady, and she sensed that she could learn to love him, and that the two of them could be happy together. She knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that he would never betray her the way Richard had. She also suspected that she wouldn’t ever love him the way she loved Richard … but, perhaps, there were other, better kinds of love.

  Selma cackled with delight. “More drama. You’ve made me a happy, happy woman.”

  “Well, that’s something,” said Sylvie, and looked through the window again. Tim was clearing the table, and Richard was still sitting, talking to Ceil and Larry, who’d helped themselves to slices of pie. Selma picked up her cane and thumped back inside.

  Sylvie sat for a few minutes, listening to the murmur of conversation through the windows. Then she went into the warm house. She found Richard standing in the foyer, putting on his coat. Someone—Tim, she thought—had packed up all the leftovers, and Richard had a Tupperware container of turkey and stuffing and cranberry chutney in one hand. She reined in her desire to smooth his scarf and ask if he’d remembered his hat and his gloves, to tell him to listen to the traffic reports on his way into the city. Instead, she just watched as he buttoned his coat.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. “It was nice to see you.”

  “Can I call you?” Richard asked, and then answered his own question. “Well, I know I can do that, so let me rephrase. Will you take my calls? I love you,” he said before she could answer. “I never stopped loving you, and I love the girls, and I want us …” His voice was raw. “I want us to be a family, Sylvie.”

  That was what she wanted, too. But she wanted it on her terms, or, at least, on terms they could agree on instead of terms he’d dictated and she’d gone along with. She wanted a chance to fix what was broken. She wanted to change her life.

  “How about this? I’ll call you,” she said, and walked him through the door. They stood on the porch and, after an awkward moment of fumbling, she kissed him lightly on the lips before squeezing his hand and saying, “Goodbye.”

  Back inside, her mother was sipping coffee at the kitchen table. Larry was playing a video game. Tim was in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher, and Ceil was leafing through one of Sylvie’s Gourmet magazines. “Gary left,” she reported. Sylvie nodded. She told Ceil and Larry which bedroom they’d be using—she’d laid out fresh towels that morning—kissed her friends, and told them she’d see them in the morning.

  She found her younger daughter curled on her side on the bed, covered by a puffy down comforter with nothing but a hank of blond hair peeking out. Sylvie bent down and kissed her cheek. “My baby,” she whispered.

  “Your baby is having a baby,” Lizzie said, with her face toward the wall. “I’m an MTV special waiting to happen.”

  “No,” said Sylvie. “You’ll be the same age that my mom was when she had me.”

  “Except with no Yale Law degree. And no husband,” Lizzie pointed out.

  “There’s no right way to live a life,” said Sylvie. “You just do the best you can. And you’ll always have me to help you.”

  “Thanks,” Lizzie said from the depths of the comforter. Sylvie kissed her again, then tiptoed down the hall.

  Diana was sitting cross-legged on her bed, with Milo in his Batman pajamas leaning against her. From the stains on his cheeks, and the trace of whipped cream in the corner of his mouth, he appeared to have been crying … crying, and eating pie.

  “I miss my dad,” he said. “Why’d he have to leave? I wanted him to stay.”

  “Oh, honey,” Diana said, and looked helplessly at Sylvie.

  Sylvie sat with them. “Do you want to call him to say good night again?” She supposed she should have checked with Diana before making that offer, but her daughter, looking relieved, found her telephone and held it out to Milo, who managed a quivery smile.

  “You know the number, right?” Diana asked, and Milo nodded, tongue between his teeth as he pushed each button. Diana mouthed the words thank you at Sylvie, who nodded and slipped out into the hall.

  There was a nook between the bedrooms at the top of the staircase. The nook held an armchair covered in a light-blue toile fabric and a small table with a lamp and a telephone. When Sylvie was a teenager, this had been the home of the single “upstairs phone” (the downstairs phone was in the kitchen), and it was where you’d sit to have a conversation with your people back home, or with your friends in Fairview, to make plans for the coming day or the next night. It was here that Sylvie sat. She sat until Milo’s murmur subsided, and she could hear Diana talking to her son for a while in a low, calming voice, until the light went out. She sat while her mother ascended the stairs and Tim came up to say good night before he drove home, and Jeff came upstairs with Alka-Seltzer and a glass of water, giving Sylvie a whispered “good night” and a sheepish grin before slipping into Lizzie’s room. She sat as the house quieted around her, until the last log in the fireplace fell down in a shower of embers and ash. She sat, alert but peaceful, the way she had years ago, as a young mother, in a rocking chair next to Diana’s crib and then, years later, Lizzie’s crib, touching their chests to make sure they were breathing, watching their eyes roll under their lavender-colored eyelids as they dreamed. Come to bed, Richard would call, half-asleep himself, and she would tell him that she was fine here, fine right where she was. She would doze in the rocking chair, coming awake as soon as they stirred, to whisper lullabies into their ears, and reach for them as soon as they began to fuss and stretch out their arms for her. She would tell them that she would love them forever, that she would always be there for them, that nothing bad would happen while she was there.

  LIZZIE

  “Remind me again why we’re doing this,” said Diana as they pulled off the Beltway, heading toward Georgetown.

  “Because we want to see,” said Lizzie from the backseat. The week before, she’d had to break down
and buy a few pairs of actual maternity jeans to supplement her drawstring skirts and pants. She lifted up her tunic and scratched her belly idly—it seemed as if it itched all the time. Poor Jeff was a nervous wreck about it. He’d read all the books, had downloaded birth plans from the Internet, and insisted on playing classical music to the baby every night after strapping headphones on to Lizzie’s belly. When she told him she was itchy he’d gone online and found that itching was the symptom of some extremely rare liver disorder that pregnant women could get. She’d pointed out that it was also a symptom of the extremely common stretch mark, but Jeff still worried every time she scratched.

  “This costs a fortune,” Diana complained, turning her car into a parking lot and handing the attendant her keys and a twenty. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”

  Lizzie climbed out of the car and pulled a map out of her purse. She had maps, she had news reports, she had photos from Google Earth, and she was positive—almost entirely positive—that they were where they were supposed to be. She led her sister two blocks north and one block east, until they arrived in front of a little yellow clapboard house with green shutters. She looked down at the picture, then at the house, on a pretty, narrow tree-lined street with rows of similar little houses, all painted shades of yellow and cream. “This is it,” she said.

  For a moment, the two of them stared in silence. Diana was still too thin, lean as a supermodel and looking like a spy with her skinny jeans tucked into high-heeled boots and a belted black leather coat. Dark glasses covered her eyes and a fur hat was pulled down low over her hair, which she’d had cut upon her return to Philadelphia. Now she had bangs, and her hair, long ever since Lizzie could remember, barely brushed her collarbones. “You look like you’re twenty-five,” Lizzie had said, and her sister had smiled sadly and said, “But I’m not.”

  “What should we do?” Diana asked.

  Lizzie considered. “We could get coffee,” she said.

  “Decaf,” Diana reminded her.

  “Maybe some snacks. And then we’ll just wait.”

  Diana thought for a moment, then shrugged and walked to the wooden bench just down the street from the house in Lizzie’s pictures. Lizzie sat beside her. “So what’s the plan again?”

  “Let me do the talking,” Diana answered. “I’m going to ask her why. For starters.”

  Lizzie nodded. “Why” was a good question, maybe even the only question. But would the woman have an answer?

  She’d discussed this with Jeff the day before, when they’d carried Milo’s old crib up from the basement in pieces and set it up on newspapers in Diana’s empty living room (Gary had taken the couch and the television set and moved both items to his bachelor pad). Personally, she didn’t want to say anything to the woman, or ask her anything. She wasn’t sure she’d even have the courage to speak. All she wanted was a look.

  “You don’t think you’ll change your mind when you see her?” Jeff was stirring the pink paint they’d chosen at the Home Depot that morning.

  “I guess it’s possible,” Lizzie said.

  Jeff had nodded agreeably and picked up his brush. Their plan was to paint the crib and assemble it up on the third floor, where Lizzie and the baby would live when the baby came that spring. That was the plan for now … and Diana had replaced the single bed with a double so that Jeff and Lizzie would have the option of staying there together. Lizzie wasn’t sure, but she thought it was what she wanted, and what Jeff wanted, too—to stay together, either in Diana’s house or in his apartment or somewhere new that they’d find together, Lizzie and Jeff and the baby.

  Beside her on the bench, she felt Diana shift and sigh. Her sister was thinking about Milo, she figured. His dad had him on Saturdays, and while part of Diana undoubtedly relished the free time, the chance for a long run or a movie or a nap, part of her would always be with her son, worrying about him, wondering if he was all right, maybe even regretting that she and Gary weren’t a couple anymore.

  “Look!” Diana hissed, and pointed her chin at the house’s front door. A woman, a little short, a little plump, with curly brown hair tucked under a red fleece cap, was stepping out onto the street. She had a purse in one hand, a briefcase in the other, and, as they watched, she locked her front door, put her keys in her pocket, and started off down the sidewalk.

  “Wow,” Lizzie breathed.

  “She looks better than she did on TV,” said Diana, who’d become, Lizzie thought, a lot less judgmental in the past weeks.

  Lizzie stared as the woman turned the corner. The famous Joelle Stabinow, without whom none of this would have happened. Without Joelle, Lizzie would have never taken Jeff to her bed, and never gotten pregnant, Diana might have never left Gary. Or maybe all of it would have happened anyhow. Maybe it was fate or destiny, the great wheel of karma, endlessly spinning, that her old friend Patrice had liked to talk about when she was stoned and I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant was a rerun.

  “Hey!” Lizzie turned. Diana had gotten to her feet and was walking, fast and purposeful, down the sidewalk, toward Joelle in her jaunty red hat. “Hey, excuse me!” she was calling. Lizzie groaned, got up, and gave chase.

  Joelle had turned around, her face round and winter-pale, friendly and expectant. She looked, Lizzie thought, completely regular, the kind of girl she might have sat beside in a psychology class or on the subway. Her hat was the same fleece one that Lizzie had in her closet back in Philadelphia, only Lizzie’s was orange. “Yes?” she asked politely.

  For a moment, Diana didn’t say anything. The silence stretched out. Just as Joelle’s expression shifted from polite to puzzled and a little bit afraid, Diana pulled off her sunglasses. “Do you know who we are?” she asked.

  The puzzlement lingered for an instant as Joelle studied their faces. Then the other girl’s face flushed red. “Yeah.” The word came out of her as a sigh. She straightened up, her face still red and blotchy, and adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “Yes. I know who you are.”

  “Who?” said Diana, like a stern teacher prompting a timid pupil.

  “You’re Diana,” Joelle said. “And you’re Elizabeth.”

  “Lizzie,” Lizzie said automatically. Diana glared at her with a look that said, We’re not here to make friends. Lizzie shrugged. She couldn’t help it. Nobody called her Elizabeth unless she was in trouble.

  “Do you want to go sit down somewhere?” Joelle asked. Lizzie admired her bravery—if it had been her, she thought, she’d have said she had no idea who these two strangers were, then gone trotting off as fast as her legs could carry her (not very fast, these days) in search of a subway stop or a police officer.

  Lizzie looked at her sister for guidance. Diana nodded once. “There’s a coffee shop on the corner,” said Joelle.

  Did you go there with our dad? Lizzie thought of asking … but she kept her mouth shut and her hands off the camera, even though she badly wanted to snap a shot of Joelle’s round, flushed face.

  A minute later, the three of them were sitting at a round wooden table in the back of a busy coffee shop. “Can I get you anything?” Joelle asked, and Lizzie was reminded, vividly, of her mother, who had that same knack for playing hostess, for putting people at ease.

  “Nothing,” said Diana.

  “Um, chamomile tea?” Lizzie said. Her sister gave her another evil look, as if having a cup of tea with this woman—this woman who in person was feeling more and more like someone Lizzie would like knowing in real life—meant that she endorsed what she’d done.

  Joelle got up to get the drinks. Diana leaned forward. “Would you stop acting like you’re on a date or something!” she whispered.

  Lizzie bit her lip and bent over her cell phone, texting Jeff their new location. Then she looked up at her sister’s face. “So you’ll ask the questions?”

  Diana nodded once coolly and said nothing else until Joelle came back to the table. She had Lizzie’s tea, and a mug of something for herself, and she was car
rying a cinnamon bun and a croissant. “In case anyone wants something,” she said, setting the plates down. She unzipped her jacket and pulled off her cap, causing her curls to spring free and bounce around her cheeks. “So,” she said, sounding, Lizzie thought, less like her mother and more like her Dad. “What can I do for you?”

  You can apologize, Lizzie thought. As if reading her mind, Joelle said, “I’m sorry, of course, if that’s what you wanted to hear. I felt terrible …”

  “Not terrible enough to keep your legs together.” Diana’s voice was low and carrying, sharp as the crack of a whip. Joelle flinched, and flushed again, but nodded.

  “That’s right. You’re right. I …” She dropped her head, so that she was speaking more to the pastries than to Lizzie and Diana. “I fell in love with him. And I was lonely.”

  This time Diana was the one who sighed. Lizzie looked at her sister, the faraway stare in her eyes, and thought that Diana must have been lonely, too, when she’d taken up with the name-tag guy.

  “It was wrong,” Joelle continued. “I’d never done anything like that before. It’s not like me. I’m not like that.”

  Lizzie had a hundred questions—whether her father had been the one to seduce her, or if it had happened the other way around, and if he’d loved Joelle, and how he’d ended it, and how Joelle was doing now, without Richard in her life. But before she could ask one of them, Joelle started talking again.

  “You should know how proud your father is of both of you.”

  Diana gave a sharp, unpleasant laugh. “Is that what you did for pillow talk? Discuss your boyfriend’s daughters?”

  Joelle’s flush deepened, but she didn’t stop talking and she didn’t look away. “He wasn’t proud of what he was doing, but he was proud of both of you.”

  “He was proud of Diana,” Lizzie said, because surely this was true. What parent wouldn’t be proud of her fast-moving, high-achieving sister? But Joelle said, “No, you too, Lizzie. He said you have the most unique way of seeing the world of anyone he’d ever known. He said he didn’t know where it came from—he wasn’t artistic, he said no one in his family was—but he said that the way you looked at things made him feel like he was seeing them for the first time.”