“Well, sure, okay, fine, it’s a toxin.” Fiona realized she was slurring, that what she had actually said was “toxshin.” Three glasses, four? How many had she had? “But . . . but is it so wrong to want to feel good about yourself?”
“You need bovine toxin injected in your face to feel good about yourself?”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m just saying.” (Which sounded like, “I’m jusht shaying.” Uh-oh. I should have eaten at least one of those stupid dates.) “Why are we judging people who do these things? Not everyone who has these treatments looks terrible. Do they?”
Nancy leaned forward with interest. In addition to being the medical expert, she was also the most notorious gossip. “Why are you so focused on this? Have you recently had something done?” But she sounded dubious, like probably Fiona would look better than she did, especially lately, if cosmetic intervention were at play.
“I guess all I’m trying to say is, are all the people who do things like this really unworthy? Not as good as the ones in this crappy book because they don’t walk around saying things like ‘I’ve grown accustomed to my own face’ and, ‘I’ve learned to love myself, which is the greatest love of all’?”
“I don’t think she said, ‘I’ve grown accustomed to my own face,’” said Carole.
“Or that last part. Which I think is a Whitney Houston song,” ventured Jane in a tone within which Fiona detected kindness, not mocking, and felt grateful for. “But I think you’re right. It got to be a bit much. I didn’t finish it, either . . .”
Fiona looked at Jane. She was smiling at her, shaking her head a little as if to say, You and me, we’re actually the only normal ones here.
Fiona realized she wanted to leave. Immediately. She suddenly wanted to be anywhere but there, with the neighborhood wives whom she had once felt so firmly and smugly in a group with, regardless of whether she actually liked them. She remembered a time when the very existence of these women in her life, the fact that she was friends with them, had made her feel as though she had won some sort of contest. And also as though she had succeeded in being nothing like her mother, who had never understood the importance of sorority in a broad sense, versus a pour-your-heart-out, leave-yourself-bare, get-yourself-hurt sense.
Except now Fiona wished to pour her heart out. But even though she was clearly upset, not one of the women asked her if she was all right, not one of them leaned forward, rubbed her back, poured her more wine even though she clearly didn’t need it, and said, Is everything okay, Fiona? Do you need to talk?
Instead, after a brief silence, the conversation about the book began to rise around her again.
Fiona stood. “I’m going to take myself home,” she said. “I think that cheese was off. My stomach is upset.” They ignored her. She heard someone whisper, “She didn’t eat a thing.”
On the way out, she looked at herself in the mirror and attempted to smooth the furrows in her brow. She couldn’t. She looked angry, permanently. But I’m not angry. I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m lonely.
She heard a sound behind her, and saw Jane’s face and torso now beside her in the mirror. Fiona noticed Jane’s brow was perfectly smooth. “Hey,” Jane said. “Maybe you shouldn’t drive . . .”
“I’m only a few streets away,” Fiona said, but she let Jane take her elbow, knowing she was right.
When they were outside, Fiona gave Jane her keys.
“I’m embarrassed,” she said.
“Don’t be. You were fantastic. And I agree with you completely, by the way. It’s about time someone stood up to those old biddies.”
Fiona found herself laughing. “Old biddies? But we’re all basically the same age.”
“That may be, but there are some nights I sit at those book club meetings and feel like the youngest person in the room, by decades. Don’t you ever?”
Fiona was silent. And then she said, “No. Never. Most of the time I feel like the oldest. Also, once you said I seemed like I was in my early forties. But I’m only thirty-eight.”
“You don’t look like the oldest. I’m sorry I said that. It’s just that you’re so accomplished—wise or something. Honestly. You look fantastic. But you know, I get Botox all the time, and no one ever, ever notices. My dermatologist is a wizard.”
Fiona turned to her. “Really? But your face . . . moves.”
“That’s because he’s so good. It’s undetectable. Baby doses. That’s the secret. Do you want me to get you an appointment?”
“Do you think he could fix these?” Fiona frowned at Jane and ran a finger along the ridge between her brows. She realized she had never done this, never sat in a car—or anywhere—with a woman who wasn’t her sister, and discussed something as frivolous as wrinkles. Girl talk, that’s what it’s called. And you’ve never even had it with your sisters, if you’re being honest with yourself.
“In his sleep.” Jane rifled through her purse, pulled out her phone, and started texting. “I bet he could squeeze you in tomorrow.”
Fiona felt pleased. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she could actually take action about something that was bothering her. “Thanks,” she said to Jane. “Let me know if he replies.”
“He’s usually pretty quick.”
“Let’s go.” Jane turned on the ignition and pulled out of the parking spot, squealing the tires slightly. She looked at Fiona sideways. “I did that on purpose,” she said. “We’re making an escape. I thought maybe you’d smile. While you still can. Ha, get it?” Jane drove until they were close to Fiona’s, and then pulled over.
“Fiona . . . is everything okay with you?”
Fiona didn’t say anything. Then: “I don’t think so. No. Not really.”
“Do you want to go home, or do you want to go somewhere and talk? We could leave your car here and walk down to one of the bars by the water. It’s not too cold.”
“That’s just what I need,” Fiona surprised herself by saying.
• • •
“Margaritas? Really?”
“Trust me, you need one. Wine is too mature. We’re supposed to be having fun.”
When it arrived, Fiona sipped the sweet-sour drink and looked out through the window of the bar at the water and the moonlight shining on it. She thought of the swans she had seen, all those months before.
Jane was sliding a finger along the side of her glass and putting the salt directly on her tongue. When she had ordered, she had asked for an extra-salty rim. She had smiled at the waiter in the same way Ilsa would have: sexily, conspiratorially.
“Are you and my sister friends now? I saw you talking at my party. At the start of the summer.”
“Oh, right, yeah. I liked talking to her. She’s really . . . just something, isn’t she? But I haven’t seen her since, no. Although I thought maybe we could ask her to be in the book club. Liven things up a little?”
Fiona shook her head. “Ilsa would never be in a book club,” she said. “No offense.”
“There was a time I would never have been in a book club, either. But here I am. Unless we’re kicked out for admitting to not reading the book and then making a dramatic escape.”
Fiona felt the salt stinging her lips, which she hadn’t realized until now were so chapped. She looked across the table at Jane and thought: The old Fiona would never have even considered confiding in Jane, a woman I hardly know. But here I am, just waiting for her to ask what’s wrong again, so I can tell her everything.
In the end, she didn’t even wait for Jane to ask.
“I think my marriage is ending. I think it ended back at the end of June, when a phone call came in . . . and I . . . I haven’t done anything about it except . . .” Fiona closed her eyes and swallowed more tequila.
Then she told Jane how she had waited inside the kitchen that afternoon while Tim talked on the telephone to the foreign-sounding young woman. When th
e talking had stopped, she had assumed the call was over. “But he didn’t come inside, and finally I went out on the porch, and he was just sitting there, looking down at the phone. I asked him who the call was from and he told me to sit down, so I did.”
Fiona remembered his explanation had been halting and hushed. “That,” he said, not looking up from the receiver, “was a young woman named Samira. A young woman named Samira from Vienna who believes I am her father.”
“But you’re not, of course.”
No hesitation. “I am.”
“What? How can you . . . what did you . . . I don’t understand.”
Now he looked up. She didn’t recognize what was in his eyes. Guilt, shame, fear. She had never seen any of these emotions in Tim before. “Her mother was a woman I met just after college, when I was traveling in Europe. In Vienna. Before I even met you. I spent a few months there and we . . . This was a long time ago . . . I never imagined—”
“Never imagined what? Do you really think this is true, that this woman calling you is actually your daughter? Don’t you know that scams like this happen all the time? You can’t just take something like this at face value!”
Tim had looked at her for a moment that stretched taut. “I knew,” he said. “I knew about her. Marta contacted me after . . . when she knew she was pregnant. I was already gone, had run out of money, so I had to go home. She sent me a letter, she told me she thought I should know she was pregnant, she was certain it was mine, she was keeping it, she was moving back in with her parents, and she didn’t want anything from me.” Silence. Fiona supposed he expected her to form a response, but she felt numb. He started talking again: “I was twenty-one. I didn’t know what to do about it. So I didn’t do anything. But then . . . months later, I did try to get in touch with her, but I couldn’t. And the years passed, and I met you, and . . .” He sighed. “Part of me always thought this call would come. I never stopped wondering . . . I never knew what to do . . . I hated that you didn’t know. I vowed that I would never keep anything else from you.”
“My honest-to-a-fault husband,” Fiona now said to Jane. “It was always all about his guilt.”
Jane’s finger, salt-covered, was still poised before her mouth. “Even all these months later,” Fiona continued, “I sometimes question whether this conversation actually happened, whether it’s even possible that Tim could have harbored a secret like this for all of these years. My entire life, all I wanted was to avoid drama like this. It gets so tiresome. It was my childhood. And yet, I walked right into it by marrying him.”
Jane wiped her finger off on her cocktail napkin and took a sip of water instead of margarita. “What did you do, after he told you?” she asked.
“I didn’t do anything.” Fiona realized how it sounded when she said it aloud. Ludicrous. “Actually, that’s not true. I took a shower. I got dressed. I hosted a cocktail party. You were there. And I’ve barely spoken to him since. But a few days ago he told me we no longer seem to have a marriage, and that maybe we just need to end it, put it officially out of its misery.”
• • •
Jane’s dermatologist had texted back when they were two more margaritas in. Which was how she ended up in a chair at Dr. Solway’s office the next afternoon, squeezing a rubberized set of red lips emblazoned with the name of a collagen-dispensing company while the doctor injected the much-maligned (at least in certain book club circles) bovine toxin into the “number elevens” between her brows.
When the doctor jabbed a second needle into her forehead, she flinched.
He patted her hand. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “It’ll all be over in a minute.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Really, it will.”
Another jab, and she closed her eyes. How was it possible that so much time had passed since that afternoon when everything in her life had changed? And yet, just like she had told Jane the night before, she had done nothing about it at all except feel herself fill with hatred and bitterness and loss. And now, with the needle to her forehead, steadily emptying its toxic contents, she realized she was now literally being filled with poison. How fitting.
• • •
Later, in their bedroom, after the late June party was over, Tim had pleaded with her.
“It was a mistake, but it doesn’t mean that our entire lives have been . . .” He sat down on the bed beside her. “A lie.”
“Get off my bed,” she had said.
“Do you know why I didn’t tell you I had a daughter somewhere out there?”
“This should be good.”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t have married me.”
“Are you trying to blame me for this?”
“I’m not saying I was right. I was wrong, and you have every right to be angry with me. Trust me, I thought about telling you, so many times. I wanted to share my secret with you, but I was too afraid you’d see it as a deal-breaker and I’d lose you, all because of something that . . . something that, to be honest, never even felt real. Until now. A stupid mistake that I made when I still felt like I was a kid. A mistake I’ve never really known how to fix.” He put his head in his hands.
“You underestimate me!” Fiona had shouted. But it was true. She still had clear sight of who her younger self had been, and she was not much different now. She knew she would have judged him harshly and would most certainly not have still married him if she had known he had an illegitimate child from a mistake made in his early twenties that he had never done anything about.
“I was scared,” he continued. “I remember you said something to me back then, something about a friend of yours who had married a man who then found out he had a child with an ex-girlfriend.” Fiona remembered. Laurie Jackson. Oh, how she had pitied Laurie Jackson. “I knew how perfect you wanted your life to be, how different from your own upbringing. And I . . . I got scared. And then it was too late.”
Fiona had pushed herself away, up off the bed, and gone to stand in a corner of the room.
“Get out,” she had said. Tim had flinched as though she had slapped him. But he had still apologized to her again, his hands held out in supplication.
“Get out,” she had said again. “Go.”
“Aren’t you going to your mother’s cottage tomorrow? Perhaps a few days of distance, and then we can—”
“I’m not going anywhere now. You have to leave.”
He had. Fiona had no way of knowing where he went because they never discussed it afterward. He had returned the following afternoon. She had thought about throwing him out again, but she was beginning to worry about the boys, who had asked her several times why she had canceled her trip and had been unsatisfied with her vague explanations. “You always go,” Eliot had said, a perplexed expression on his face.
“Well, I’m not this year,” she had snapped.
In the weeks that had followed, Tim did not grovel, because Tim was not a groveler. But he did try to talk to her. Finally, she relented.
They sat at the dining room table, she at one end, he at the other.
“I don’t know what to do,” he began. “You’re my best friend, Fiona, you really are . . . and this huge thing is happening to me, and I can’t talk to you about it. But I wish I could, because . . . well, because you’d know exactly what to do.”
“No, Michael is your best friend,” she had said.
He had shaken his head and she had been powerless not to think, You’re mine, too. But she wouldn’t relent. She couldn’t relent. She had her reasons, her own secret, and especially now, even though she knew how hypocritical it was, she had to hold fast to her ideals. But why? Why? There was a weak internal voice she had to struggle to silence. Because this is a betrayal of me. Whereas my secret has absolutely nothing to do with him.
“I can’t help you with this,” she had said, and left him sitting alone yet a
gain.
A few days later, he had approached her once more. Something about him had changed. He was no longer seeking forgiveness. “I think you should know that I’m seriously considering offering to go visit, or asking her if she wants to come here. I think it would be cruel at this point not to—”
“You can’t do this to us, Tim. She cannot come here. What will the boys say? What will they think?”
“I don’t know what they’re going to think, but I can’t keep this secret anymore, whether or not you want to deal with it. I don’t want to shut her out. None of this is her fault. And now that Marta has died”—here Fiona had breathed in sharply; this she had not known, and how could she have, since she had been refusing to allow Tim to talk to her?—“she’s alone, and she’s twenty-two, and she just . . . she wants to meet me. And I don’t want to say no.”
“What you need is a paternity test.”
“You’re being incredibly callous. Her mother just died. This is my responsibility! I can’t hide.”
“How convenient that you’re not going to hide from this mistake now that you can’t.”
He came closer, stood before her. “What am I supposed to do? Never invite her here, never go there to visit, never suggest we should meet in person? Destroy her self-esteem completely by rejecting her?”
Fiona closed her eyes. “Please stop.”
“Whether you like it or not, I am her father,” he said. “I can’t reject her. I could never live with myself if I did. If you can’t understand that—”
Her eyes flew open. “Then what? If I can’t understand that, then what?”
He appeared startled by her anger. “I don’t know,” he said.
• • •
The doctor had finished his injections. He handed Fiona some tiny gel ice packs and said, “We’ll deal with those sun spots the next time you’re in. I have some fantastic new laser treatments with barely any downtime. And you really do look great for your age, by the way. It was just those furrows, and they’ll soon be gone.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Fiona said, standing.
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