Grand Avenue

by Joy Fielding

  “Why don’t you get your daddy to help you make cookies?” Susan suggested.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna take your mommy out with us for a little while,” Vicki said.

  “No!” Montana protested.

  “Don’t frown,” Barbara warned. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

  “I can’t go,” Chris said, as Montana continued pulling on her fingers. “Wyatt’ll be up any minute, and I promised Montana …”

  “I can look after the kids,” Tony offered. “Go on, hon. You haven’t been out of the house in weeks.”

  “No!” Montana said again, her delicate features crowding together in the middle of her tiny face as her long blond hair whipped from cheek to cheek with each stubborn shake of her head. “She said we’d make cookies.”

  Tony immediately scooped his daughter into his arms. “What’s the matter, kiddo? You don’t think your daddy knows how to make chocolate chip cookies? I’ll have you know I’m an expert on chocolate chip cookies. In fact, I make much better cookies than your mommy. Didn’t you know that the best chefs in the world are men?”

  Montana wiggled out of her father’s arms, glared at her mother. “I don’t like you anymore. You’re not a good mommy.”

  “Montana …”

  “It’s okay, Chris,” Tony said, as Montana ran back into the kitchen. “She’ll get over it. You go with your friends.”

  “You’ll be a good mommy later.” Vicki quickly guided Chris toward the front door.

  “Really, I shouldn’t …”

  “We’ll have her back in time for dinner.” Susan opened the door, pushed Chris outside.

  “Where are we going?” Chris asked, taking a deep breath, sucking in the warm September air. She raised her face to the sun, closed her eyes, felt the sun sear into her cheek like a hot iron. Had it left a mark? she wondered, lowering her head, looking back to the house, catching Tony’s shadow watching her from behind the sheer curtains of her living room.

  “We’re kidnapping you,” Vicki announced, leading the women toward the pearlized-beige-colored Jaguar parked halfway down the street.

  “Really,” Chris said, coming to an abrupt halt. “I can’t do this. I have to get back.”

  Vicki unlocked the car doors as the women surrounded Chris, blocked her escape. “Get in the car,” someone said.

  Chris peered out the rear window of the large luxury car, watching one winding road disappear into another. They’d only been driving for ten minutes, and already it seemed as if they were in another world, a magical world untouched by the mundane concerns of harsh reality. A world where large estates sat well back from the road, and traffic signs announced horse trails and crossings. A world where peaceful, rolling green hills created the calming illusion of country life, although it was situated less than half an hour from downtown Cincinnati. Lots of money, both new and old, Chris thought, in the twenty square miles that comprised the tony suburb of Indian Hill. Had these people been affected by the recession at all? Did they even know about it? “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  “Just looking,” Vicki said. “See anything you like?”

  “Only everything,” Barbara said from the seat beside Chris.

  Chris felt Barbara’s hand resting on top of hers, wondered if Barbara was keeping it there to prevent her from bolting from the car. She’s so beautiful, Chris thought absently, fighting the urge to run her free hand across Barbara’s soft cheek. She doesn’t need all that makeup and hairspray. She doesn’t need anything at all.

  “Did I tell you what Whitney said the other day?” Susan asked from the front passenger seat, her voice resonating quiet maternal pride. “We were getting ready to take a walk when it started raining, so I told her we’d have to go later, and she said, ‘That’s okay, Mommy. We take open umbrella.’ ” Susan laughed. “I thought that was pretty good for two years old, that kind of deductive reasoning.”

  “Amazing,” Barbara said.

  “Puts Einstein to shame.” Vicki laughed.

  “Well, I thought it was pretty smart for two years old.”

  “I remember when Tracey was two,” Barbara said, “and I’d been playing with her all afternoon, and I was just exhausted, so I told her I had to go lie down for a while, and of course, she wasn’t tired, because she was one of those kids who never slept, so I went into my room and lay down on the bed, and a few minutes later, I heard these little feet come padding into the room, and I opened one eye and saw her struggling with this big blanket, which she finally managed to throw over me, and then she climbed into the chair on the other side of the room and just sat there, watching me. Next thing I knew I’m sound asleep. I woke up an hour later and she’s still sitting there, she hasn’t moved, she’s just sitting there staring at me.”

  “Josh is a bit like that,” Vicki said of her four-year-old son. “Kind of creepy.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply Tracey was creepy,” Barbara protested.

  “Josh is definitely creepy,” Vicki said matter-of-factly. “I mean, I love him and everything, it’s just that he’s a little weird. You know what he asked me for the other day? Tampax!”

  “Tampax! Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “He said he heard you swim better with it.”

  The women hooted with laughter. Even Chris found herself laughing out loud. Immediately she felt the tug at her ribs.

  “And Kirsten,” Vicki continued. “She’s a hard one to figure out. I never know what she’s thinking.”

  “It’s better that way,” Susan said. “Ariel tells me every thought in her head. Most of them have to do with hating her sister. I don’t think she’s ever going to forgive me.”

  The women chuckled, fell silent, stared out the windows at the magnificent expanse of rolling hills.

  “So, when are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Barbara asked Chris, managing to make the question sound casual, although the stiffening of her fingers on Chris’s hand gave her away.

  Chris felt her breath catch in her lungs. Even though she’d been expecting the question ever since climbing into the backseat of Vicki’s car, still its directness startled her. She’d been lulled into a false sense of security by the women’s laughter, by the easy familiarity of their shared confidences. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said, the words sounding unconvincing even to herself. Barbara sat back, raised one eyebrow; Susan twisted around from the front passenger seat; Vicki’s eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror. All looked skeptical, concerned, even vaguely frightened. “What are you looking at?” Chris asked. “What’s the matter with everyone? There’s nothing going on. Honestly.”

  “We hardly see you anymore, you never return phone calls, you’re always busy—”

  “You know how it is,” Chris protested.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Tell us.”

  “There’s just a lot going on,” Chris said.

  “You just said there was nothing going on,” Vicki reminded her. “What?”

  “Which is it, Chris? You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Careful. You’re starting to sound like a lawyer.”

  “I’m your friend,” Vicki said simply.

  “Sorry,” Chris apologized. “It’s just that you’re all making a big deal over nothing.”

  “Are we?” Susan asked.

  “Are you angry at us?” Barbara asked. “Did we say anything, do anything to offend you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why don’t we see you anymore?”

  “It’s just that things have been a little hectic lately, that’s all,” Chris insisted. “Wyatt’s sick all the time, he seems to pick up every bug out there. Well, you know how kids are—they’re these little incubators for disease. So first he gets sick, and then I get sick. Except it takes me longer to recover. And then I have all this catching up to do around the house.”

  “So why’d you fire the cleaning lady?” Barbara asked.

  “You fired Marsha?”
Susan asked, referring to the woman whose services they all shared.

  “Tony wasn’t happy with the job she was doing,” Chris tried to explain, “and I’m home all day. There’s no reason I can’t do it.”

  “Do you like doing it?” Vicki asked, as if this thought were beyond her comprehension.

  “I don’t mind,” Chris said. “Really. I don’t.”

  “You’re not getting agoraphobic, are you?” Susan’s voice was low, her eyes wide.

  “What’s agoraphobic?” Barbara asked.

  “Technically, it’s a fear of the marketplace,” Susan explained.

  “I hate the marketplace,” Vicki interjected.

  “It means being afraid to leave your house.”

  “I’m not afraid to leave the house.”

  “You seemed afraid this afternoon.”

  “Is everything all right with Tony?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you two getting along okay?” Barbara asked.

  “Of course. We’re fine. I mean, it’s been a little tense lately because Tony’s not very happy with his job, and I think he lost a lot of money in the stock market.”

  “You think?” Susan asked. “You don’t know?”

  Chris shook her head. “You know how hopeless I am about money.”

  “Since when?”

  “You have your own bank account, don’t you?” Vicki asked.

  “We have a joint account. Why would I have my own account?”

  “Every woman should have her own account. Just in case. And at the first sign of trouble, she should start socking money away.”

  “But that’s so dishonest,” Chris protested.

  “No,” Vicki told her. “It’s self-preservation. Besides, you don’t want to have to go to Tony for every little thing. You don’t, do you? Go to Tony for every little thing?”

  “Of course not.” Chris felt her cheeks flush angry red. What business was it of Vicki’s how she and Tony handled their finances? Vicki was married to a wealthy man. She had no understanding of what it meant for a man to work at a job he hated in order to keep food on the table. Money was tight right now. Tony was right to have her on a strict allowance, to make her account for every dime.

  “First thing Monday morning,” Vicki was saying, “I want you to go to the bank and open your own account. You hear me, Chris?”

  “I hear you,” Chris said, deciding it was easier to agree than argue.

  “I’ll go with you,” Barbara volunteered, patting Chris’s hand. “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t have my own account either.”

  “God, I don’t believe you two,” Vicki said. “What century are you living in anyway?”

  “Why don’t we pull over,” Susan suggested as they turned right onto Sunshine Lane. “Walk for a bit.”

  Immediately, Vicki pulled her car to the side of the road. Four doors opened. The women stepped into the warmth of the September afternoon.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” Barbara said, grabbing on to Chris’s hand, swinging it back and forth, as if they were schoolgirls. Vicki walked several paces ahead, Susan several paces behind.

  “Can we slow down just a little,” Susan asked.

  Even twenty pounds overweight, Susan was lovely, Chris thought, with her fine brown hair curving toward her strong jaw, the roundness of her cheeks erasing any telltale signs of age, making her look even younger than she had at their first encounter.

  “Come on, ladies, I can’t walk this slow,” Vicki groaned. Typical, Chris thought. Vicki’s patience was limited. Hadn’t she gotten tired of waiting for her perm to grow out and impatiently hacked her hair off to within an inch of its life? Luckily, the pixie do suited her. Chris smiled. Vicki had a way of spinning even the dirtiest straw into gold.

  They walked along the side of the road till they reached Cayuga Drive.

  “That’s it for me, ladies,” Chris said, stopping abruptly, feeling suddenly sick to her stomach. “The heat’s getting to me.” She felt her knees buckle, give way, watched the ground rushing up to meet her as she fell to the pavement.

  Comforting arms immediately surrounded her.

  “My God, Chris, what happened?”

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Take deep breaths.”

  Chris tried to push away their concern with a wave of her hand, bursting into tears instead.

  “What is it, Chris? What’s wrong?”

  “I think you need to see a doctor.”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” Chris said.

  “How long have you been falling down like this?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Chris, you fell down the stairs. Montana said you fall down all the time. Now you collapse in the middle of the street.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “Not that hot.”

  Chris took a deep breath, pushed the seemingly unstoppable flow of tears roughly toward her ears, burying her hands beneath the ponytail at the back of her neck. “Oh God,” she wailed.

  “What is it?”

  “Please, Chris. You can tell us.”

  Chris searched the worried eyes of her friends. Could she tell them the truth? Could she? Dear God, what would they think of her? “I think I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

  “You’re pregnant?” Barbara repeated. “That’s wonderful.” She paused. “Isn’t it?”

  Chris lowered her head to her chest, her shoulders shaking as she cried.

  “Is it wonderful?” Susan asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Chris heard herself wail, hating the sound. It sounded weak and desperate and ungrateful. “It’s not that I don’t love my children.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I love my children more than anything in the world.”

  “We know that.”

  “And it’s not that I don’t ever want more kids. Maybe in another year or two, when things have settled down a bit. It’s just that the timing seems so wrong.” Chris raised her arms in defeat, then dropped them to her sides. “We had to take out a second mortgage on the house last month, and Tony hates his new job, he’s already talking about quitting, going off on his own, starting up his own agency, working from home. And it all just seems like too much sometimes, you know. Like I’ll never have a minute to myself. And I know how bad that sounds, because I know how much Tony loves me, I appreciate all the things he does for me, what good care he takes of me and the kids, I really do, but sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe. And another baby right now …”

  “You don’t have to have this baby,” Vicki said simply.

  There was silence.

  “I can’t have an abortion.” Chris began shaking her head as Montana had earlier, her ponytail whipping back and forth across her cheeks. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You should talk this over with Tony,” Barbara suggested gently.

  “I can’t talk to him about this. He’d never understand. He’d never forgive me for even considering …”

  There was another moment’s silence, then, “He wouldn’t have to know.”

  Chris stared at Vicki in disbelief. She broke free of her friends’ comforting arms and pushed herself to her feet, pacing back and forth along the side of the road. “No. I can’t. You don’t understand. Tony would know. He’d know.”

  “How would he know?” Barbara asked.

  “He’d know,” Chris said, her head bobbing violently up and down. “He keeps track.”

  “What do you mean, he keeps track?” Susan asked. “Are you saying he keeps track of your periods?”

  “He’s been wanting another baby ever since Wyatt was born.”

  “What about what you want?”

  “I don’t know what I want.” That’s why she was so lucky to have Tony, Chris almost screamed. He knew what was best for her.

  “He keeps track of your periods,” Susan repeated wondrously, as if trying to make sense of the words.

  “It’s not as bad as it sound
s. Look, I’ve blown this whole thing way out of proportion. I do that all the time.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Who says you do?” Barbara asked. “Tony?”

  “You don’t blow things out of proportion, Chris,” Susan said. “Chris, are you listening to me?”

  “I have to go home,” Chris said, spinning on her heels, walking back toward the car. “If you won’t drive me, I’ll hitch a ride.” She looked up and down the road, saw no one.

  “Of course we’ll drive you,” Vicki said, chasing after her.

  “Chris, wait up!” Chris heard them call from somewhere behind her.

  “Chris, please, we’re on your side.”

  Were they?

  “We didn’t mean to upset you,” Barbara said as they climbed back inside the car.

  Chris kept her head down on the drive back to Mariemont, her eyes in her lap. “I really want this baby.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “We want whatever you want.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Chris said as Vicki pulled her car onto Grand Avenue. Chris saw Tony’s shadow watching from behind the living room window as she pushed open the rear door and climbed out of the car. Had he been standing there all this time?

  “We love you,” Barbara called after her. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know that.” Chris wrapped the words around her like a shawl. “I love you too.”

  Her front door opened. “Hey, baby,” Tony said. “You’re home early.”

  “I missed you,” Chris told him, stepping across the threshold, closing the door behind her without looking back.

  Five

  Mommy! Mommy!”

  Susan flipped over onto her right side, strained to look through the darkness toward the clock radio by her husband’s side of the bed. Not even 4 A.M. “Oh, God,” she moaned, knowing less than two hours had passed since she’d finally drifted off to sleep, a sleep plagued by worried thoughts and restless dreams. Guess I’m not the only one, she thought, listening to Ariel’s repeated cries, about to toss off her blankets and see what was bothering the child when her husband’s hand on her arm stopped her.

  “I’ll go,” Owen said, sounding as tired as she felt.