Perfect Life

by Jessica Shattuck

  But it was too dangerous. It had gotten under his skin already, The Situation, as he liked to think of it, and Laura was too close to it. He had been so aggravated, so emotionally raw after his visit to the church yesterday that his ulcer had come back. As well as the old itch of eczema on the joints of his fingers, the insides of his elbows. The electric charge of bitterness that had coursed through him standing at that window had taken him by surprise.

  He had gone to the baptism out of a sense of curiosity, a removed, entertained feeling, like it would be some sort of lark. But trying to see through the thick, distorting historical glass of the church window, he had felt the profound exclusion he was, apparently, for the rest of his life to endure. He could not even see what the baby looked like. His own genetic material, possibly the only mark he would leave on this earth, and he had to stand on the wrong side of a melting glass window watching him be used in this spiritual charade.

  The crowd of people in attendance had been blandly but expensively dressed, and carefully coiffed. He had watched them casting glances over their shoulders the whole time to see who else was there. This was the world his baby would be raised in. An intellectually meager, provincial world of fat-cat Americans with no more sense of their own privilege than a herd of Christmas turkeys saved for the zoo. The anger this raised in him was unexpected. And it scared him. He had enough work already keeping the blackness at bay.

  Before he could think twice he deleted Laura’s email from his in-box. The waitress cleared the messy remnants of bacon and eggs, the pile of soggy home fries. Outside, pedestrians marched past the window—more teenagers, a few old women, a man in a construction hat. And babies—one snuggled invisibly deep in a carriage, another red-cheeked, smiling, up high in a giant, outdoorsy-looking backpack, another absolutely tiny, just a pair of pajamaed legs sticking out of a carrier, a flash of white knit cap. For what seemed like the first time ever, Neil really looked at them. The future. Suddenly he understood.

  4

  FOR LAURA, GETTING OUT THE DOOR with the girls every morning was like launching a rocket ship. It took a mad push of activity—gathering snacks and sandals and extra pairs of underpants, special teddy bears and piano music and show-and-tell objects (where, oh, where could that pebble from the beach in Maine last summer be?) and jackets, and of course her own keys and phone and wallet and, if possible, cup of coffee. Laura had never been an organized person and this was exaggerated and exposed by motherhood, which seemed to demand an inordinate degree of foresight and planning.

  “My leotard, we forgot it,” Genevieve announced this morning, stricken, as Laura turned off of their street.

  “I have it—in your bag,” Laura said, glancing at her daughter in the rearview mirror. Genevieve was such a worrier: the smallest things were capable of sending her into fits of doubt and antic fretfulness. Laura lived in a constant state of vigilance against loose ends and sad stories, anything to do with death or orphans, and all manner of hurry.

  “No, it was on the sofa. I put it there,” Genevieve insisted, her features tightening with concern.

  “But I got it—I picked it up and put it in your bag,” Laura countered, masking her own sudden uncertainty: had she left it on the sofa?

  “From the sofa?”

  “Yes, Vievee. From the sofa!”

  “I a Yankee doo doo, a Yankee doodle doo doo,” Miranda sang out from her seat beside Genevieve, oblivious to the crisis. “What Yankee doo doo, Mama? What Yankee doo doo?”

  Genevieve looked fretfully out the window.

  Had Laura been like this as a child? She felt, somehow, genetically responsible for Genevieve’s worrying, although she was not sure why. She was not a big worrier now. But she had no mother to offer information on her childhood self. Annabelle Trillian had died when Laura was nine. And without a mother’s narrative to represent, or even misrepresent, whatever her childhood self had been, it remained elusive—both more present and less clear than other people’s.

  It was a relief when Laura had both girls, finally, out of the car. This morning was a “work morning,” at least theoretically, which meant that she was to go home to her study and use her brain. She was due, according to the schedule drawn up by Charene, her energetic twenty-five-year-old editor at The Beacon magazine, to come up with twenty fall books to be vetted for the September issue. Last year she had somehow managed to parlay her long-outdated and never very impressive experience as an assistant editor at a New York publishing house into a job writing a monthly books column for The Beacon. It was both something she took pride in as the occupation that separated her from being a full-time stay-at-home mom with all the identity-obscuring predicaments this position was fraught with, and a task she hated.

  Laura shut the door behind her and stepped over the obstacle course of discarded jackets, sippy cups, and stuffed animals that Miranda liked to arrange in little rows all over the house, snuggled under T-shirts and pajamas. There was half a banana perched on the front hall table, its peel dangling off the side like a wilted bloom. Laura did not even think of picking up. It was the kind of thing Mac did not understand: how could she walk into a mess like this and not be compelled to at least push its contents into the coat closet out of sight?

  Coffee and handbag in hand, she marched straight upstairs to her little study on the third floor. At her desk, she began sorting through the pile of books, looking over jacket copy for the umpteenth time, as if these nuggets of marketing might reveal more upon second inspection. What on earth interested readers of The Beacon? She had no better idea now than she’d had when she started.

  But there was a more pressing question, which made it difficult to focus: should she call Neil? All afternoon yesterday and all morning today he had been on her mind. Not front and center, but in the back somewhere beneath the ordinary tasks and preoccupations, the mundane business of assembling meals and brushing teeth. Like an alarm clock, ticking, poised to startle her awake.

  She had emailed him after the christening and gotten no response. But he might not be online, considering that he was away from home; his card suggested he was still living in LA. So if she really wanted to see him, she should call. Laura hated calling people. The pressure to be witty and the sense she always had of barging in—appearing suddenly in someone’s head, preceded only by the invasive trill of the phone ringer—was inhibiting.

  But she did want to see Neil. Their encounter at the church had left her wound up—charged with that kind of energizing nervousness that came with flirtation. It was surprising: had she been flirting with Neil Banks? Old friend, father of her best friend’s baby? No, no. She dismissed the idea. She had just been talking—happy, after so many years, to see him. But in that five minutes, she had tasted the promise of presenting herself anew, dredging up the best and most interesting parts of herself for his appreciation, and it had given her a rush: here she was, Laura Trillian, in all her specificity.

  Outside the window of her study a landscaping crew was using electric hedge clippers that sent up an annoying racket. Laura got up to pluck her eyebrows in the bathroom mirror. The face that looked back at her looked bored. Decidedly. So what if calling Neil meant enmeshing herself in a situation about which she would have to lie to Jenny? It was unrealistic of Jenny to have expected Neil to be out of sight, out of mind, forever. If she were not having lunch with Jenny today she might not even think of it as a transgression. And what was life about if not to grab opportunities? To seek out new experience, complication, adventure? These were not tenets Laura usually lived by. But they spoke to her now. Or anyway, they provided cover. There was a stirring of something long dormant in her gut: a kind of thrill that in a certain way served as a warning.

  She rifled through her wallet, found Neil’s card, and began dialing the number. On the other end there was that plaintive unsatisfying bleat of a cell phone ringing. But then—of course, of course—the click of voice mail.

  “Neil,” Laura began breathily, suddenly unnecessarily
confused, “Hi! It’s Laura. I just thought I’d see—I don’t know if you got my email since you’re not home…” She could hear her own voice prattling on, taking on a slightly formal diction and then thanking him (thanking him!) in close, as if he were a professional contact from whom she had just asked a favor or something. How silly. She hung up and shook her head in an effort to leave the whole episode behind. Whatever.

  She would go downstairs and make a cup of tea and refocus. Put on her Beacon magazine hat for the remainder of the morning, which now seemed, unfortunately, to be all of one hour before she had to leave to meet Jenny.

  Jenny liked to meet for lunch at the café of Louis Boston, that odd Old World establishment that reigned magisterially over one end of Newbury Street. It was near Jenny’s office and had valet parking for Laura’s benefit. (How glamorous Laura always felt climbing out of her car in the cobbled driveway! This was one place she did not have to don the mantle of shame for driving Mac’s SUV.)

  Climbing up the steps and into the stone mansion the store was housed in, Laura felt a tick of excitement at being a part of a fashionable—or at least as fashionable as this dowdy city ever got—lunching world. She scanned the narrow, blank-walled room for her friend, who was, of course, already there, at a table in the corner. Jenny was always on time.

  “Hiii.” Jenny stood to kiss her hello, overriding Laura’s babble of excuses. “You look nice—what’s this? New?” she plucked at Laura’s jacket, which was new—short and black and cropped in the current style. Very, according to the salesperson who had talked her into it, Jackie-O.

  “I went ahead and ordered the mussels to start. To share,” Jenny said. “Bueno?”

  For all her bossy, pragmatic ways, Jenny was good company. There was the comfort of shared history (their friendship had spanned almost half their lives now), and there was the refreshing straightforwardness of Jenny’s opinions, which were never couched in niceties or apology and were always uniquely her own. Unlike the earthy Cambridge mothers Laura had met in the parks and playgrounds of her neighborhood, Jenny was never judgmental or concerned with political correctness. And unlike the preppy, moneyed wives of Mac’s coworkers, Jenny was never cagey, ignorant, or oblique.

  Laura sipped her own glass of Pellegrino, and tried not to feel guilty about the fact that she had just, under two hours ago, called Neil without—still—having told her friend she had seen him.

  “I don’t understand what’s gotten into Jeremy,” Jenny was saying. “He’s so tense all the time and so whiny—if I have to hear one more thing about his knee, it’s going to put me over the edge! Really! It’s not like he hasn’t seen twenty doctors about it already…”

  “Is it his work, maybe?” Laura offered. “It must be hard—”

  “Ugh.” Jenny dismissed this with a wave. “Of course it’s hard. Launching a software company is hard. But he’s good at it. It’s the thing he’s good at. And the stakes aren’t even high anymore. I mean, if he fails this time around, it’s not like anyone will think he hasn’t got what it takes…No, no. You know what he asked me yesterday?” she leaned in closer over the steaming plate of mussels.

  “What?” Laura asked gratuitously.

  “If I had invited Neil.” Jenny almost hissed.

  “Neil?” Laura felt a bolt of adrenaline shoot through her. “Why?”

  “Ugh.” Jenny sank back in her chair. “I have no idea.”

  “Well, did he—I mean, he just thought you would have?”

  “He thought he saw him or some ridiculousness,” Jenny snorted.

  There it was. Laura could feel her face growing hot. She should have told Jenny. Or should—it occurred to her—tell her now.

  “I think this nonbiological father thing is catching up to him—I mean, maybe he wasn’t really focused on it when it was happening, with his whole IPO happening at the same time,” Jenny continued.

  “Actually…” Laura made herself say, and Jenny stopped.

  “What?” She had a quizzical look on her face. Clearly something in Laura’s tone must have been off.

  “Actually…” Laura hesitated, and then found herself veering away. “I think that’s very normal. I mean, that he’d have complicated feelings, you know, at something like the baptism.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m not saying it’s abnormal for him to have complicated feelings about it. All that focus on Colin and parenthood…It’s just he needs to deal with it.”

  “Mmm.” Laura nodded. She had just as good as lied to her friend by not offering up that she had seen Neil. That in fact Jeremy was not crazy. And why? What was compelling her to keep this to herself?

  A very tall, nervous waiter delivered their salads with some mumbled, unnecessary information regarding the frisée, which was a replacement, or was being replaced. Laura nodded and smiled, grateful for the distraction. Jenny did not register his presence and kept talking. Jeremy had not even wanted to invite his mother to the baptism. Had acted like she wouldn’t be interested, like it wasn’t a big deal…

  Laura shook her head and murmured vaguely. What was becoming clear to her, as Jenny spoke, was that there was something selfish in her own secrecy. It was not about protecting Jenny. She wanted Neil to herself.

  “…I mean, don’t you think?” Jenny asked, snapping Laura back into the conversation. Laura had no idea what she was asking.

  “Mm.” She fretted her brow. “Well, how is he with Colin these days? Does it affect how he feels toward him—or acts toward him, do you think?”

  “Oh, you know Jeremy,” Jenny said with a sigh, accepting this as a response. “He’s always a little preoccupied. But no more than usual. With Colin, I mean. He’s sweet with him when he’s not too tired to, you know, take him for a walk or whatever. He likes to watch basketball with him.”

  “That’s cute,” Laura said.

  Jenny shrugged. “Colin’s usually just sitting next to him, in his little Bumpo seat. But he seems to like it,” she added—was it hopefully?

  “Oh.” Laura pictured this: wan, abstracted Jeremy on the sofa, and Colin, serious little baby that he was, beside Jeremy in the molded plastic seat Jenny claimed he was so enamored of. It was a little sad, actually. Her own deception about Neil began to fade into the back of her mind.

  “Jeremy’s just not that big on physical affection,” Jenny continued. “When was the last time you saw us snuggling up in public? But he is a decent father—God knows, I think about, you know, like, Andy Fesenden, who can’t even make it home for his kids’ birthday parties—”

  “Oh, I know—he’s sweet with Colin. I’ve seen him,” Laura offered.

  “You have?” Jenny leapt at this. “You think so?”

  “Of course.” Laura grasped for specifics—had she actually ever seen Jeremy, for instance, holding Colin? “He’s so calm.”

  “He is calm. That’s true. I probably shouldn’t be so hard on him. I know it’s difficult. Logically. I mean, I’m sure it is for anyone…”

  Underneath this, there was an unusual agitation in Jenny’s voice. Laura knew her friend well enough to hear this. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? She had made an odd choice marrying Jeremy. Laura and Elise had pondered it many times. Maybe it was Jenny’s strong personality—she needed someone as pliant, as full of negative space, as Jeremy was. Or had this been obscured during their courtship, which had occurred at the pinnacle of Jeremy’s success as an entrepreneur?

  “But what about you?” Jenny turned the subject abruptly. “How are the girls?”

  “Oh, fine—the usual…” Dutifully, Laura recounted a few cute stories, and some complaints about Genevieve’s sleeping, which was infamously disordered. As she talked and picked over her salad (was this really what fava beans were? she had ordered in a state of distraction) she felt a growing unease. There was something not right about the way Jeremy seemed these days. Jenny and Jeremy’s marriage, which had always been enigmatic, seemed suddenly and contagiously grim. And in the middle of this, sweet little Colin�
��so small, so earnest, and so fragile. There was something about him—or really about babies in general—that filled Laura with a sort of teary enthusiasm. That gave her a longing to protect, coupled with the knowledge that at some point, inevitably, protection would fail. Little Colin would have to enter the wide world of false starts and indecipherable conclusions, mysterious causes and effects. So would her girls, those two little bundles of nerves and energy, highly specific collections of experience and genes.

  “She’ll be okay,” Jenny said, making a worried, sympathetic face. “All kids have their issues.” And Laura realized her eyes had welled up.

  “I know,” she said, laughing and wiping her eye with the back of her hand. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

  And for a moment they were both quiet against the din of chatter and clinking cutlery that echoed through the high-ceilinged café.

  5

  NEIL LISTENED TO LAURA’S MESSAGE with a feeling of resignation. He would have to call her. She seemed, for whatever reason, to really want to see him.

  He slid the phone back into his pocket. He was at ZGames getting his orientation tour and network passes, meeting his “team.” Corporate America had finally sucked him in. The door to the development offices opened and Joe, the painfully shy and breasty young man who had just given Neil the studio tour, reappeared.

  “They’re ready to see you, sir,” Joe mumbled, wiping the tiny bangs of his haircut back with his forearm. He looked positively subterranean—like a chubby, earth-grubbing mole, pale from lack of exposure, and faintly damp.

  “Not this ‘sir’ business again,” Neil chided, gathering up his jacket.

  “Sorry, sorry—I know, I’m just—” the poor boy fumbled, shaking his head.