Was this going to be the end of it—was her marriage going to end not with a bang but with a whimper, not over wild adulterous sex and lipstick on the collar but over arugula salad?
People broke up over less. People stayed together after more.
Sex was a kind of power. Everybody knew that—look at Harvey Weinstein, look at Steve Wynn and Matt Lauer! But work was a kind of power too, and people didn’t always look at it that way. Who got a career, who didn’t, and what you did with yours once you had it—these were all their own kind of power plays.
Lu looked north toward Mansion Beach. Maggie had told her that Mansion Beach got its name because a mansion had once sat where the parking lot was. You could still see the outline of the foundation.
Here Lu was, nearly a century after Virginia Woolf had told women to procure some money and a room of their own. But what was the point of having the room if you couldn’t figure out how to get to it? If you had to clear away a half-built Lego set before you used it?
If her college roommate, Sandia, were here she’d say something like, Rise up, girl!
Lu was astute and, yes, privileged enough to realize that Jeremy wanting her to shut down the blog wasn’t a life-or-death situation. But it was hundreds of little deaths, all the time, every day: like death by a thousand cuts. Missed chances. An atrophying brain. Time passing. Added up, put together, those cuts made a real injury.
Why do we have to rise up? Lu wondered. The word up implied against. Why, for heaven’s sake, can’t we all just rise? Lu watched a lone surfer make his way toward the water—he was either brave or stupid, heading in when everyone else had left. The water was churning now, a dark gray, and the sky had turned a strange color, not dark, exactly—more like a sickly yellow, the color of a stomachache.
She thought again of Virginia Woolf, who had written, Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. And she knew she had to finish the conversation. As Lu walked back toward the house she could feel it in the atmosphere. It was the storm coming, but it was something else too, all around her—a reordering of the molecules. The way everything was changing.
Chapter 58
Joy
Come to the shop, Joy texted to Maggie. Storm coming.
Joy had heard from Mitzy Collins, who owned a T-shirt shop on Water Street, that the offshore winds were now nearly hurricane force and all flights to Block Island were grounded indefinitely. Mitzy Collins had learned this from her cousin Joe, whose ex-wife’s new husband worked for New England Airlines, which made daily flights between Block Island and Westerly. So Joy, who had been out at Stevens Cove, had come into the shop and sent Olivia home.
Joy Bombs had been lucky during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, but other island businesses hadn’t fared well at all. Ballard’s had ended up with inches of sand inside the restaurant, which had to be removed wheelbarrowful by heavy, painful wheelbarrowful. The Beachhead (along with much of Corn Neck Road) had sustained heavy exterior damage. Old Harbor Bike Shop lost a fleet of scooters.
Joy was on the floor behind the counter, boxing up the for-here coffee mugs, whose shelf was precarious in the balmiest of weather circumstances, when she heard the door rattle. “Sorry!” she called. “We’re closed!” (Had she forgotten to turn the sign?) The door continued to rattle; in fact, if anything, the rattling increased in intensity. Joy popped her head above the counter to see if it was anyone she knew—a friendly fellow shop owner, perhaps, comparing notes on storm preparation. No, it was a woman with a small boy, nobody from Block Island. “Tourists,” Joy muttered. They probably wanted to come in for a hot cocoa and a front-and-center seat for the storm. She glanced at her phone. Maggie hadn’t answered.
Answer me now, Joy texted. She hated to resort to these tactics, but clearly they were called for. If u don’t answer me I don’t pay the cell phone bill. No reply. Wonderful. Ghosted by her own daughter.
The door-knocker hadn’t gone away. “Fine,” growled Joy. She made her way to the door, opened it a little bit, and said, “Sorry, we’re closed.” She glanced down at her phone, whose screen showed the three little dots that meant the person you had just texted was texting you back.
“Oh, I don’t want to buy anything,” said the woman. “I’m looking for Anthony Puckett. I thought you might know where he is.”
The dots disappeared.
Joy looked up then and gave the woman her full attention, and as she did so her heart did a funny little jump and she realized she was staring right at Cassie, Anthony’s ex-but-not-really-ex-wife. She looked much the same as she did on her Facebook page: the full lips, the perfect blond hair, the silk dress. Joy looked down at the pint-sized version of Anthony standing next to the woman. This would be Max. He was (of course) as adorable as his mother was gorgeous, with a red T-shirt on which was printed a dinosaur and the word Max-o-Saurus. He had a Norman Rockwellian cowlick and the sturdiest little legs you could imagine. She couldn’t help smiling at such a delectable specimen of little boyhood, and Max smiled back. “You thought I would know where someone named Anthony Puckett is?” she said to Cassie. “Do I know you?” Better to pretend innocence than admit to a Facebook stalking habit.
“No,” said Cassie (sort of haughtily, Joy thought). “But my husband knows you.”
Joy pretended confusion. In high school, during her brief flirtation with the theater department, she’d played Abigail Williams in The Crucible. It had involved a lot of hysterical screaming, and she’d nailed it.
“My husband definitely knows you.”
“Hmm . . .” Joy tried to look as if she were searching among the many, many names and faces in her memory, and was coming up short.
“I’m hungry,” said Max. He pulled gently on his mother’s hand.
“They’re closed, sweetie. We’re just here for a minute.”
“We are closed,” conceded Joy. “But I might be able to find him a little something.” No reason to punish the little boy for the sins of the mother and the father. “Does he have any allergies?”
“No,” said Max.
“We try to stay away from processed sugar,” said Cassie.
“Good luck with that,” said Joy. “You’re in a bakery.” She was reminded of the untimely, damaging visit from Shelly Salazar, book publicist. She went into the kitchen and returned with a plate of leftover pies in assorted flavors—she’d been planning to bring them home to Maggie. But Maggie, who still had not answered Joy’s text, clearly did not deserve any whoopie pies.
Joy put half of the pies on a plate for Max and half on a plate for her and Cassie. She pulled out three chairs at one of the four-tops, but Cassie said, “I’m just going to let him sit at a different table, if that’s okay.”
Joy shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.” Then, relenting a little, she pointed toward the kids’ table that had a basket of toys next to it. “He’s welcome to sit there,” she said. Without meaning to, she kept stealing surreptitious glances at Cassie. She was so pretty. Her skin was porcelain, and her hair was perfect, and her clothes fit perfectly. She looked like an adult version of a super-Caucasian American Girl doll.
Cassie set Max up at the small table. “Can I have your phone?” he asked.
“No,” she said. Then, “Oh, I guess, why not?” To Joy: “I’m normally very strict about electronics. But I kind of feel like everything’s gone out the window this summer.”
“I know what you mean,” said Joy.
Cassie rooted in her handbag and said, “Oh, shoot, I must have left it at the hotel. Max, play with the toys.” She rooted some more. “Found it! But I’m sick of it. Turning it off.”
Joy indicated the plate. “Help yourself.”
“No, thank you.”
Joy took two and bit into the first one ostentatiously. For a moment the two women stared at each other. Cassie’s eyes were a light icy blue. Looking at them felt to Joy potentially dangerous, like looking directly at the sun during an eclipse.
“I do know who you are,” said Joy. �
�And it’s over between Anthony and me, so really, you have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Cassie. “That’s not what I’m here for. You know what? Fuck it.” She glanced guiltily at Max, but he was absorbed in a picture book from the toy box and he didn’t react. She took a peanut butter surprise pie (the surprise was the bits of Heath bar in the filling) and allowed herself the smallest bite possible. “Oh, my God. These things are amazing.”
Joy was starting to like Cassie a tiny bit better. “So what are you here for?” she asked.
“I’ve been married to Anthony for five years,” said Cassie. She blinked her annoyingly long eyelashes (and so dark! with Cassie so blond! extensions?) and pursed her glossy lips at Joy. “And I hate to say it, but I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time. Maybe ever.”
“Well, I haven’t seen him since July. He’s probably happy because we broke up.” Joy stood. Max, from the small table, looked up, alarmed, and pulled the plate of whoopie pies closer to him.
“No,” said Cassie. “Sit back down. I can’t believe I’m saying this. I mean, overall, his health, his stress level, his potential for happiness . . . they are all greater than they ever were with me. He’s always been . . . so worried. With this big weight of a book on him. I didn’t make it easy on him. I wanted his success as much as he did. Maybe more.”
Joy regarded the other woman. She hated to admit that a seed of hope had sprouted deep in her soul, which had for so long been too dry to support any growth.
“That’s the only time I’m ever, ever going to say that,” continued Cassie coolly. Her face was a smooth mask, devoid of wrinkles, blemishes, emotion. “I’m not going to beg you to get in touch with the man I married. But it’s too late for us, for him and me. That’s very clear. And maybe I didn’t do right by him, and maybe this is the way I think I can make it up to him.” She glanced over at Max and lowered her melodious voice. “He doesn’t want me,” she said. “He wants you.” She rose from her chair and said, “So you really don’t know where he is?”
He wants me? thought Joy. She felt the blood rush to her face. She was happier to hear that than she was willing to let on. “I really don’t know where he is,” she said evenly.
“Figures,” said Cassie. “Come on, Max.”
Max looked up from the book. There was a swipe of filling on one cheek, and his left sneaker was untied. There was something about his expression that reminded Joy so much of Anthony: it was hopeful without being needy, and sweet without being guileless.
Chapter 59
Lu
Lu came into the house on nervous little cat feet. The boys were watching TV, and Jeremy was still in the bedroom. He had moved from the straight-backed chair to the bed. He was lying on his back, the back of his head resting in his hands, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He was staring at the ceiling.
“Do you remember when I was working at the firm?” Lu asked. “Before kids.”
“Of course.” His voice was gentler than it had been, more conciliatory.
“You were just starting your residency, remember?”
“I do.”
“Working crazy hours.”
“Crazy.”
“And our schedules almost never matched up.”
“I know. You were alone a lot.”
“I didn’t mind.” She had never minded being alone when Jeremy was at the hospital. She had a new job. She had friends, and plans, and she could go for drinks or dinner any night of the week if she chose to. Sometimes she didn’t choose to. Sometimes she poured a glass of wine and put on her pajamas at eight-thirty. She was always tired after a day at work—they worked the young attorneys to the bone—but it was such a good kind of tired, a satisfying emotional and intellectual fatigue.
“But every now and then, we’d match up perfectly, on a Saturday! We’d both have it off. Remember that? Remember those Saturdays?”
Jeremy had a faraway look in his eyes. “I remember,” he said.
“Jeremy?” Lu sat cautiously on the edge of the bed.
“Yes?”
“I liked me better then.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, considering. “I liked you then too.”
“Better?” she asked. She was scared of his answer.
“No . . .” he said slowly. “Not better. But you were happy. I liked you happy.” He hesitated. “Do you know what I thought when I read your blog?”
Lu leaned back a little bit, so that her upper back was against Jeremy’s legs. “What?”
“I thought that you don’t love us anymore. The way you wrote about this other family—like you wanted us to be them, not us to be us. Like you like them better.”
Lu could see how it came across that way. She could see how that hurt Jeremy. “Of course I love you. I love you just the way you are, I don’t want you to be Jacqui and Charlie and Sammy. But I can’t love just you.”
Jeremy sat up and pushed his back against the headboard. “Lu—”
“No. You have to listen to me. Nobody has ever asked that of you, Jeremy, to love just your family, and not your work, and not all of the things you can do that have nothing to do with this household. You don’t know what that’s like. You can try to imagine it, but you can’t really know it, not the way I do.” She watched him, wondering what he was thinking, and she kept talking. “It’s not enough, Jeremy. I can’t do this . . . forever, just this. But I also can’t do the other thing if you’re thwarting me at every step. If you . . .”
“If I what?”
“If you’re not proud of me.” No, that wasn’t even it. “If you don’t take it seriously. To do it the right way takes hours every day.”
“Okay,” he said. “I get that.”
“You do?”
“I do. I’m trying to. So maybe you have someone, Maggie or someone like her, two mornings a week. You can do a little bit more every day while the kids are napping. We can afford a little bit of babysitting, if it’s what you really want.”
Tears of frustration sprang to Lu’s eyes. It was a concession, but it was all wrong. He didn’t really get it. “Chase hasn’t napped for two and a half years, Jeremy, and Sebastian is in the process of giving his nap up. If you ever had charge of the boys on your own you would know that.” Her voice came out sharper than she’d realized it would. “To do this thing the right way takes hours every day. The people who are successful with this are doing it as a full-time job. I can’t do it if I don’t take it seriously. If you don’t.”
She thought again of Virginia Woolf. Money dignifies. And she told him about the money, all of it: what she had in her secret account, and what she was making from affiliate links, and how many potential advertisers she’d found just this summer, and what her agent thought she could make in a book deal. She watched something change behind his eyes as she spoke—as fleeting as a flame, as undefinable. Was it hope? Desire? Disbelief?
Then she knew. It was respect. The money was changing it for him.
You go, Virginia, Lu thought. Nearly nine decades ago you wrote those words, and you hit the nail on the goddamn head.
“I didn’t realize,” he said.
“Of course you didn’t. I never told you. It’s another secret I was keeping from you. But with this kind of money, we can do a lot. We can pay your parents back. We can hire a nanny. We can get that awful wallpaper out of the basement bathroom.”
Jeremy smiled at that. “That wallpaper is horrendous.” She waited. The wallpaper was the least of it, obviously. “The money is a big deal, Lu. I get that. That’s huge. But even so, a nanny isn’t going to replace you giving them your full attention. Despite everything you’re saying, I still think one of us should. They’re still so little. That’s what we believe in. That’s what we always agreed on. Don’t you see?”
Again, the sensation of the high dive, the closing of the eyes, the jumping. “That’s not what I believe anymore. I’m sorry, Jeremy, no. I don’t agree.�
� She shrugged, and there was an apology in her shrug, but at the same time there was no apology at all. “I just don’t agree.”
“What do you mean?”
She stood and walked over to the window, which faced Anthony’s cottage. “If you think one of us needs to be home full-time with Chase and Sebastian, then you need to quit your job and be home with them.”
“Quit my job? I can’t quit my job. You can’t really mean that, Lu. People don’t quit jobs like mine.”
She whirled around. “Of course I don’t want you to stop being a doctor. Of course not. I’m trying to point out how ridiculous that would be, for me to ask you to do that. Priorities change, Jeremy, and needs change, and our priorities about this aren’t the same anymore. They just aren’t.” Jeremy’s mother had been home with him, and he’d loved it; Lu’s mother hadn’t, and she wished she could have been more. But she was finally able to articulate the exact thought that had been eluding her all summer: her need to be more than a mother now outweighed her belief that a parent needed to be the primary caretaker. “What you want me to need and what I need aren’t the same.”
There, she’d said it. Everything but the big one.
Jeremy got off the bed and came to stand beside her.
“But that won’t work, Lu. A full-time job for you? I just don’t see how we could possibly swing that right now, not without creating chaos. When we have another baby—” His voice was pleading with her, and his eyes were too.
Now it was time for the big one. She had climbed the ladder for a third time; she jumped again. “I don’t want to have another baby, Jeremy.” There.
“Lu! No, please don’t say that.”
“I have to say it. It’s true. I don’t want to. I’m not going to.”
“Lulu.” Jeremy’s voice cracked. “I want three kids so badly. I’ve always wanted three kids. I was always clear about that. So were you! You used to want three kids.”
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