“What? No, he didn’t. Why?”
“Because our daughter and Malcolm are out together somewhere and I don’t know if I should be worried.”
“It’s Malcolm,” Peter says. “You’ve known Malcolm since the day he was born.”
It is true that we were the first visitors to the maternity ward after Maureen gave birth to him. But it is also true that he’s been living on the opposite coast for seven years, during which I have seen him only a few times. Maureen reports that he’s just been in a small spot of trouble and everything’s fine now, but I have only her word to go on, and I’m acutely aware that as parents we shape and polish the narrative when it comes to our children, even if it means doing extensive tweaks and rewrites.
“But I don’t know him now,” I say. “None of us does. Not even Solly. Solly barely ever sees him.”
Peter looks wounded, as if I’ve just called him out for being a deadbeat father. “What, exactly, are you worried about?”
“I don’t know. I’m just worried. I’m worried about everything.”
“Please, honey. Try not to be. This is our vacation. You really need to relax.”
Right then, the doorbell rings. Peter smiles with his whole face. All the relief is right there for me to see. He might have been playing it cool in front of Solly, in front of me, but it’s clear: he was worried, too.
“Ding dong,” Ivan shouts as he runs to open the door. He jumps into Malcolm’s arms. Malcolm lifts him up and puts him on his shoulders. Ivan grabs hold of Malcolm’s tight curls with his little hands.
“I’m sorry we’re late,” Malcolm says to Peter and me. “Not sure if you know this about your daughter, but she isn’t the speediest person on the planet.”
“There was live music in the town square,” Clem says. “People were dancing. It was so cool. We sat and listened and watched. And then we realized it was getting late.”
She’s flushed and excited and talking a mile a minute. “I wanted to take a cab, but Malcolm insisted we walk. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”
* * *
• • •
SOLLY SUGGESTS a nightcap on the roof.
Ingrid has taken Ivan to bed; this is what she must do each night since the boy cannot fall asleep alone. The teenagers excused themselves at the same time Ingrid did, retreating to their own rooms. Solly makes the suggestion in front of both Peter and me, but we all know the invitation is really just for Peter. I’ve spent many nights over many years third-wheeling in their friendship, so I can tell when what Solly wants is time alone with Peter.
“I’m in,” Peter says. Then he looks at me. “Jen?”
What he’s asking is not: Do you want to join? He’s asking: Is it okay if I go even though we’re scheduled for a big blowout fight about those phone calls?
“I think I’ve had enough to drink,” I say. So have they, but that’s beside the point. “You two go ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Peter takes my face in both of his hands and looks me straight in the eyes. “I love you,” he says.
“I know.”
“But I mean it. I really, really love you.”
“He does.” Solly stands behind me, squeezing my shoulders. Sensing trouble, he’s doing what he can to help smooth things over. “He’s a fool for you. Always has been. Because he’s a very smart man with exquisite taste.”
They take the bottle of tequila with them. I sit alone at the empty table, staring out at the bay. It’s so dark I can no longer distinguish the sky from the sea.
Roberto, Enrique and Luisa come into the dining room. They have changed out of their white zippered coats and wear jeans and sweatshirts, bags slung over their shoulders.
“We go home now,” Roberto says.
He doesn’t phrase it like a question, but still I say, “Of course. Go.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“We leave on for you the lights.”
“You can shut them off,” I say. “I’m heading up to bed now.”
“It’s okay. We keep them on for you.”
“Please turn them off.” I stand up. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Roberto and Enrique say.
“Buenas noches,” Luisa calls after me.
* * *
• • •
THERE’S NO GOOD REASON not to use this time to try to work on my book. So what if it’s late at night? So what if maybe I’ve had a little too much to drink? I’m typically a morning writer; I do my best work between the hours of eight and eleven after copious amounts of caffeine. But I’m also typically a writer who is able to finish a book she’s started, and finish it on time, so all bets are off.
The file is staring at me. I am afraid to move my cursor near it. Opening the file will only remind me how far away from this story I’ve strayed. Sometimes I think maybe my problem is that I’ve said all I can about teenagers and their troubles. That maybe I’m losing my empathy for those who can still start over. Reinvent themselves. Teenagers have their whole lives and an infinite number of pathways stretching out ahead of them. Unlike middle-aged women, for example.
I imagine Ingrid in her bedroom across the house. A veritable writing machine, getting in her thousand words. Is she lying next to her sleeping child, furiously typing away? Fine-tuning her three-act structure? Honing her story arcs? Sharpening her characters and their dialogue?
I click on Ingrid’s manuscript.
Lost in Space.
I don’t really intend to read it. Not now. I know I owe her feedback, but I’ve also made it clear it will take me awhile. So I figure I’ll just give it a glance. See if she knows how to write a compelling opening sentence. I’m even curious about what font she chose.
I start to read. I read beyond the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter. I keep reading and reading and before I know it, it’s gotten late and I’ve made some serious headway.
Peter creaks the door open. I can tell he’s disappointed to find the lights still on and me wide awake.
“Hi,” he says. I can smell the tequila from across the room.
“Hi.”
“Jenna, I’m sorry. I’m dealing with this. I really am. It’s a complicated situation. She’s a great assistant. And I rely on her. But . . .”
“Peter,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not when you’re drunk.”
“Really?” He looks like I just told him he won the lottery.
“Really.”
“Wait . . . are you saying the opposite of what you really mean . . . and then expecting me to know that you’re saying the opposite of what you really mean?”
“No. And I don’t admit to ever having done that.”
“All righty, then. I’ll just go brush my teeth.”
Peter finishes up in the bathroom and climbs into bed. He reaches over and gives my knee a squeeze. He falls asleep quickly, snoring at full volume without any windup, and I stay awake reading Ingrid’s manuscript until I’m nearly halfway done. I’d keep reading it if I could because I want to know what happens next, but I can no longer manage to keep my eyes open.
TUESDAY
I met Solly before I met Peter, and Solly’s never let either of us forget it. He mentioned it in his toast at our wedding, and he’ll gleefully take whatever opportunity presents itself to interject the phrase ‘as someone who has known Jenna longer’ into any conversation. I met Solly only a few minutes before I met Peter, but still, to Solly, those minutes are pure gold.
We were in a bar. Despite my appreciation for margaritas and alcoholic drinks in general, I was never someone who spent much time in bars, and certainly never someone who went to bars looking to meet men. It’s a cliché, I know, and maybe even a litt
le sexist, but I think women who go to bars to meet men are desperate, and men who go to bars to meet women are gross.
What makes our origin story more interesting than the same old story of two people meeting in a bar, what lends it a wee bit of charm, is the fact that the bar in which we met happens to be the oldest bar in New Orleans. There we were, two Southern Californians, drinking Sazeracs, in town for Jazz Fest, both dragged along by friends who cared much more about jazz than we did, which is to say they cared and we did not at all.
I was twenty-seven years old. I’d just broken up with a boyfriend after two years together. Some friends from college had organized a meetup. I hadn’t planned on joining, but the boyfriend had just moved out because he’d fallen in love with a coworker, who was actually his supervisor, and he’d decided to hell with the workplace restrictions and to hell with me. So yes, I was able to sublimate my feelings about jazz and spend money I didn’t have to join my friends so that I wouldn’t have to sit at home alone with the kitten he’d given me as a birthday gift not six weeks before dropping the bomb about the woman from work. (That kitten is now the ancient cat with bladder control troubles I’m paying a neighbor’s kid five bucks a day to feed while we’re on vacation.)
Anyway, Solly and I were standing next to each other waiting to get the bartender’s attention. He turned to me and said, “I understand why he’s ignoring me, but you? That makes no sense at all.”
I looked good that night and I knew it with the sort of certainty only available to younger women. I’d shed a few pounds in the breakup. I’d gotten impulse bangs that gave me an air of sophistication. I smiled at him while also sending the clearest message I could that I was not interested in getting chatted up, not interested in men period, given that they’re all pigs who jump into bed with their supervisors.
Solly didn’t get my message; he continued to talk to me. But he wasn’t chatting me up. Well, he was chatting me up, but only in the way he chats up everyone. I got my first inkling of this when the bartender finally turned to Solly and Solly spoke to him in the same intimate and conspiratorial tone he’d been using with me.
Solly ordered three Sazeracs and the bartender charged him for only two. He handed one to me.
I took it and I took a longer look at Solly and wondered if maybe I was wrong: about men, about talking to men, about meeting men in bars. He winked at me, an unforgivable sin I quickly absolved him of because he smelled good and he dressed well, not like all the other twentysomethings with their ripped T-shirts and backward baseball caps.
I nodded toward his second Sazerac. “You’re not messing around.”
“Oh, but I am,” he said. “That is why I’m here: to mess around. This drink, however, is for my best friend.”
I remember thinking: What adult still uses the term best friend? And I also remember thinking: He may not be my type, but I could totally go to bed with this guy.
“We’re turning thirty,” he continued. “And we’re celebrating by drinking Sazeracs and listening to great music. You?”
I lifted my cocktail. “I’m celebrating the breakup of a relationship.” I knew this was flirty. To announce that you are unattached within minutes of meeting a man sends a very strong signal. Like a neon sign around your neck: OPEN FOR BUSINESS.
He looked me up and down. “He broke up with you.”
My cheeks burned red. “No. That’s not true.”
He shrugged. I could tell he didn’t believe me. “Either way, it’s the best thing that could have happened. You made him feel small, inferior, not because of anything you did, but because he was small and inferior. You need to find someone worthy of your strength, and he needs to find someone he can dominate. Someone with whom he can be the boss.”
“Actually”—I took a long sip of my Sazerac—“he was fucking his supervisor at work.”
Solly threw his head back and laughed. And then I laughed, too. We both laughed and laughed and leaned into each other like two people who’ve been sharing laughs for years.
“What’s so funny?”
I turned to look at the person who was interrupting one of the first moments of genuine fun I’d had since getting dumped. He was good-looking, better-looking than the man I was laughing alongside, but even with his white hair he looked to me like the other boys in the bar.
Solly handed him a Sazerac and nodded in my direction. “She’s what’s so funny.”
“And you are . . . ?”
I stuck out my hand. “I’m Jenna.”
He took it. “Peter.”
Peter uses this fact, that he introduced himself first, that Solly hadn’t even bothered to learn my name, as an argument that actually, he met me before Solly did.
Right then Solly spied a woman across the room—long blond hair, bright red lipstick, probably not old enough to be in a bar—and excused himself.
Peter gestured to Solly’s empty seat. “May I?”
* * *
• • •
IT’S RAINING.
The storm, the tormenta, which took a turn away from us, turned back again because tormentas will do what tormentas will do without taking into consideration the wishes of any particular vacationer. It looks as though it will stay offshore, churning up the seas, wreaking havoc on the lives of those colorful fish who today probably wish they lived in the aquarium at my childhood dentist’s office rather than in the Bay of Banderas.
I get up and close the wooden shutters to stop the water from getting in and then I climb right back into bed again. I open up my laptop and I read Ingrid’s book until I finish it. By the end, I’m tearing through it—it’s suspenseful and exciting. It’s sad and also hopeful. I mostly forget that I’m reading something written by Ingrid Solomon because it’s so improbable that Ingrid Solomon, former jewelry designer and second wife to Solly, could have written this book. I’m not saying it isn’t derivative, because of course it is—what book isn’t? But it’s good. It’s really good. And I can’t even criticize the ending for being too tidy. Yes, the boy and his group of friends rescue his father, take down the evil corporation and save the day, but the boy has to grapple with the truth that his parents’ marriage is over, that the cracks were there already—how else to explain the mother’s willingness to so quickly and completely accept that her husband ran off with another woman?
When I’m done, I stare at the last page for a very long time.
“Is that Ingrid’s book?”
I hadn’t noticed Peter had woken up. I snap my laptop shut like he’s caught me watching porn.
“Yep.”
“How is it?”
“I haven’t really read it, I was only skimming it. Just getting a sense of what she’s been up to.”
“And?”
I put the laptop on the side table and get out of bed. “I don’t know yet.”
Peter looks at the closed shutters. “Is it raining?”
“Yes.”
“Cozy.”
“Cozy? This is a beach vacation. We don’t want rain on a beach vacation.”
“I love rain.”
“I know you love rain, Peter. But can you really say you love rain now? Here? Today?”
“I love rain any day,” he says and he pats the empty spot next to him in the bed.
I climb back in and lie down and he spoons me, resting his soft bearded cheek on top of mine. I play with the string of his Pedro bracelet.
“I’m really sorry about yesterday,” he says. “I talked to her. I told her she can’t call me again. I don’t think she will. Things are complicated at work. And they are complicated with Gavriella. I know you’d be happy if I’d just get rid of her, but I can’t. Not without creating a serious crisis.”
I don’t say anything. He breathes into my ear.
“I need you to trust me,” he continues. He pulls me tighter against him. “Trust
that I’m trying my best. To handle a situation that is exceedingly thorny.”
I pull away and roll over onto my back. I stare at the ceiling fan as it slowly moves the chilly air around the room. The rain is falling harder now and I can hear the palm trees blowing in the wind.
“Are you sleeping with her?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it isn’t. You aren’t leaving me much of a choice but to ask you flat out. You’re hinting at something without saying it. So—are you?”
“No. I am not sleeping with her.”
I turn to look at him. We stare at each other silently for several rotations of the ceiling fan. I can tell he’s telling the truth.
“So what’s going on?”
“Jen. I just told you. I can’t really talk about it. It wouldn’t be appropriate. Or fair to the people involved.”
“Wait . . . is this about Solly?” The words come out before I’ve thought it through. It’s as if I put the puzzle together before looking at the picture on the box. But as soon as I say it, I know I’m right. This is about Solly. This is about Peter cleaning up Solly’s mess. This is about Solly abusing his friendship with Peter.
“Jenna.”
“Is Solly sleeping with her?”
There is a long beat of silence. Peter doesn’t nod. He doesn’t even meet my gaze. He stares up at the ceiling fan.
“Fucking Solly,” I hiss.
“I really, really don’t want to talk about this. I’ve told you. I’m trying to handle things and I don’t think she will call again while we’re on vacation. There are legitimate problems happening at work but I’ve told her to take them to Kim. Kim can handle everything while we’re away. Please. Can’t we just parking lot this?”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Said what?”
“I can’t believe you just used parking lot as a verb.”
He laughs a little. “You never told me it’s on your list.”
“You should know it’s on my list. It’s the new version of let’s put a pin in it. Just another one of those idiotic things they say at Clem’s school.”
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