“Mamamamama,” Colin began to chant, twisting suddenly to sit himself upright.
“Excuse me, young man!” Jenny said, reminded of the task at hand. “No partying without a diaper!” She pushed him back and Colin wailed indignantly. He was impossible to change lately, lying still for a few moments and then suddenly, just as she was about to slide a new diaper under him, scrambling in all directions, forcing her to pin him down or change him while he stood pulling at her hair, thumping on her shoulders, threatening at any moment to fall off the table.
Jenny was actually fine with this development. In the last weeks Colin had begun to come out of his shell. He smiled more often and made crazy little shouting sounds whenever he was allowed to indulge his new obsession: crawling. And his crawl itself was just about the cutest thing Jenny had ever seen. His hair had come in too—the softest spray of brown curls, a daintier version of Jenny’s own.
She pulled his little jeans back up and leaned down to kiss his belly—that smooth, slim little plain of perfection, still devoid of baby fat. “Let’s go, birthday boy,” she said, scooping him up.
“Mamamama,” Colin chanted again, craning around to look out the window now that he was upright.
“See?” Jenny said. “Your friends.” Together they watched as Mac foisted Miranda from his back and replaced her with one of the twins, both of whom were yelping with delight. It was an unusual scene—Mac at ease, playing with the children, and automatically Jenny filed it away to trot out in response to Laura’s next round of husband complaints. Colin put a hand on the window and began to bang.
As of two days ago, Jenny was officially on leave from work. Finally, she had told Eric. She had coaxed, cajoled, and ultimately whipped herself into his office with the confession. The speech she had planned, the explanation of not only the cancer but of her own secrecy, was crisp and thorough, but once she was in Eric’s office, the facts had burst out of her completely unscripted, and in the most unprofessional way.
“You’ve been sitting on this for how long, Jennifer?” Eric had asked, laying his giant football player’s paws flat on the desk.
There had been silence for a few moments, punctuated only by Jenny’s sniffling, and from far below the rush of city sounds.
“You know your job here is secure,” Eric said. “You are the best talent we have here—you take a few months off if you want, you take a year off—your job will be here. Waiting for you to come back.”
The gravity of his expression, the genuine sadness, and beneath this, the remorse, were affecting. Eric Watson felt not only sorry, but responsible for her silence. “I don’t know what kind of place I’ve made you feel like you work for”—he shook his head—“that you would keep quiet about this for so long.”
Jenny had wanted to reassure him that it was not him. It was not Genron. It was her—but she found herself uncharacteristically unable to speak. It was maybe his likeness to her father—or if not actual likeness, the equation she had created between the two men in her mind. She just sat there in his office like a little girl and cried. It was mortifying in retrospect. But at the moment it had felt almost joyous. The relief of giving up her secret had been physical. Her whole body felt like a collection of brittle sticks turned suddenly to light, flexible liquid.
So now, when Jeremy went in for this next round of chemo, Jenny would go with him. And she would come home for the afternoon and take Colin out in the jogging stroller and give him dinner and a bath. It would not be either/or. She would not oversee the launch, next week, of the new national Setlan PPD ad campaign. It was out there. And she had conceived of it. Now, as Eric put it, it would have to walk on its own two legs.
She had wrangled one thing out of Eric: an okay for her to call off the dogs on poor Neil Banks the “corporate spy.” I just know he isn’t, she had explained. I’ve known him a long time. Look—it’s been four weeks now, and what news is there about anyone else launching a copycat campaign? Of course, it was too late; he had already been fired. But she had done her best to rectify the wrong. She had suffered through an awkward, tail-between-the-legs conversation with this obnoxious Rod Emerus and done her best to make things right. And the company had offered him his job back. But Neil was not going back to work. He was leaving the country. He had told her this when she called to invite him to the party. She and Jeremy had offered him an agreement: visitation rights with Colin and recognition as the boy’s biological father. He could do what he wanted with that. At the moment that seemed to be very little, but he had been happy with the possibility and the openness. It had felt to Jenny herself like a relief. The truth was out. Now maybe somehow, it would set them free?
Back downstairs, Jenny kissed Colin on the soft crown of his head and handed him to Maria. As usual, he let out a cackle of delight. It didn’t matter how little time had elapsed since he had last seen Maria—fifteen minutes or a weekend. He was always overjoyed to reconnect. Jenny had gotten over her jealousy of this. She was his mother, after all.
Maria whisked him off to go play with the other children on the lawn and Jenny began making Bloody Marys. She had never been much of a bartender—or a drinker, for that matter—but this left her unhampered by some sense of how to make the drinks right. She filled a few glasses with ice cubes and splashed a liberal amount of vodka over these, poured in the cloudy red mixer, and as an afterthought grabbed some wilted celery stalks out of the refrigerator to stick into each glass.
“Sweetie?” she said, stopping first at Jeremy’s side. “I made this one extra light.”
“Thanks.” Jeremy extended his hand for it distractedly. His face bore the focused expression Jenny had come to recognize as his disease-talk look.
“Are you okay over here? Are you warm enough?”
Jeremy nodded his head. “I’m fine. Did you know Chrissy’s cousin had renal cell cancer?”
“No,” Jenny said, looking over at Chrissy. It was the last thing she liked to hear about: more cancer. Other people’s cancer. Other people’s miraculous recoveries and strategies and treatments. But Jeremy thrived on it, sucking information out of the tiniest scraps of narrative, gleaning data, conducting his own surveys. Jenny recognized that he needed to do it. This was how he had always succeeded in business—his drive, his thoroughness, his one-track mind. He was going to outmaneuver this disease.
“Where was he treated?” she asked, forcing herself to engage.
“Johns Hopkins,” Chrissy answered. And in the moment that their eyes met Jenny could see that Chrissy understood. She understood what Jeremy wanted, and she understood what Jenny didn’t want, and she would supply both. Jenny was grateful.
“One for you?” Jenny asked, holding out her tray.
“Why, thank you.” Chrissy batted her eyelashes. “That looks just perfect.”
And Jenny was free to continue her rounds.
Elise was now leaning against the stone wall of the terrace beside Genevieve, deep in conversation. The little girl had her hair in braids and was twitching the paintbrush-like tip of one of these over her cheek.
“You two look serious,” Jenny said, and both of them looked at her as if she were an unexpected stranger, someone who spoke a different language.
“I was just explaining photosynthesis,” Elise said by way of explanation. “Genevieve asked.”
“Ahhhhh, very important.” Jenny raised her eyebrows. “Bloody Mary? For grown-ups only, sweetie, sorry,” she said to Genevieve, who gave her a withering look in return.
“I know.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—sometimes I forget that you’re seventeen.”
This elicited a giggle from Genevieve. It was their running joke. She was such a pretty girl, with her pale hair and slim bones and Laura’s big gray eyes. And leaning there against the wall with Elise, she really did look like a little adult. Some waify, thoughtful-looking supermodel who would do ads for perfume or one of those ethereal designers.
“No, thank you,” Elise passed on the drink—so se
nsible, as always—and Jenny continued her rounds.
Laura was now out on the lawn with Mac and Miranda and the boys. She was sitting, her cotton skirt spread over the grass and legs extended, with Miranda hanging around her neck. And she was talking to Mac, who had paused, head up and eyebrows raised, with Nigel on his back. Jenny could not hear what Laura was saying, but it was punctuated by the bark of Mac’s laugh.
“Onward!” Mac bellowed, charging forward on his knees. On his back, Nigel shrieked and gripped his little fingers tighter into Mac’s hair. The easy luck of the scene struck Jenny: Mac and Laura playing with the children, a husband and wife and their progeny romping on the green grass, all laughter and good health. Never mind that this was not a scene she and Colin and Jeremy would ever have enacted even before the cancer. She felt the ice-cold tentacles of envy rise in her throat. But she blinked and forced herself to swallow them down. She would not allow herself self-pity: that was not a Jenny Callahan approach.
Instead she hoisted the tray of drinks—now down to two—aloft. “Want one?” she said, approaching Laura.
“Mm, delicious!” Laura laughed, peeling Miranda’s arms from around her neck and scrambling to get up. “But I’ve been so unhelpful! What can I do?”
“Sit down, sit down,” Jenny commanded. “Nothing. Have a drink. The food will be ready in a minute.”
“Let me help—”
“My mother’s in charge. Just sit. Really.” Below them, on the sunken terrace, Judy Callahan was bustling around with a platter of quiches, a giant bowl of fruit salad, and—her own insistent contribution—a bowl of “ambrosia”: mandarin oranges, coconut, and Cool Whip.
“Well, where’s your drink, then?” Laura said.
Jenny shrugged. “Right here, I guess.”
Laura patted the lawn beside her.
“Let me get Colin,” Jenny said, and returned in a moment with the happy, wiggly birthday boy, whom Maria had crowned with a sparkly blue and silver cardboard hat. Jenny took a sip of the Bloody Mary, which was outrageously strong, and let Colin scramble off her lap and onto Laura’s skirt.
“So Mac is quite the Pied Piper today,” Jenny said. “To what do we owe the honor of his presence?”
“The market crashing?” Laura said.
“Is it that bad?”
Laura shrugged. “You know I think the apocalypse is coming, so I’m not the person to ask.”
“You do?” Jenny asked, genuinely surprised. Laura had always been sort of softly, uninformedly liberal, but not actually engaged in the state of the world in any concrete sense.
“Kind of.” Laura sighed. “But that’s not birthday party talk, is it?” she smiled down at Colin, who was busily trying to remove her bracelet.
“Since when did you become some sort of doomsayer?”
“Me?”
To Jenny’s surprise, Laura colored and looked, almost nervously, down at her hand in the grass. “Oh, I don’t know, just reading the news…”
And suddenly Jenny understood. Laura’s recent skitteryness, her aura of contrition, her reclaimed flush. She had slept with Neil. The revelation was stunning. Jenny stared at her.
“What?” Laura said. “What’s the matter?” She lifted a telltale hand to her throat.
Jenny shook her head, feeling suddenly dizzy. Laura was sleeping with—or at least had slept with—Neil. “Nothing,” she said automatically, scrambling to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”
“Are you okay?” Laura asked.
Jenny nodded without looking at her. “Just watch him a moment, will you?” She gestured at Colin, who was still entranced with Laura’s necklace.
“Of course—but—” she could hear Laura saying, but she kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other, into the house, blood singing in her ears.
“Grab the ketchup while you’re in there,” Judy Callahan called merrily, obliviously, after her.
Jenny walked past Elise and Chrissy and Genevieve and Jeremy, huddled still in his somber place on the chaise. Through the French doors and across the sleek hardwood floor of the sunroom, over the Persian-style carpeting, and up the stairs. Vase, mirror, carpet, photos, she took in the objects fervently, using their familiarity to press all else out.
Until finally, sitting on the foot of her own bed, facing the dressing room mirror, she allowed herself to think. Think! She had only a few moments before someone would come looking for her. The urgency of the predicament made her sweat.
She had been betrayed. That was one thing. Her friend, one of her two best friends, had slept with…what was Neil? Her old boyfriend? Her baby’s father? Her enemy? Whatever he was, he was hers. Jenny’s brain faltered a moment over this: wasn’t he? She pictured Neil as he had looked standing there when she had last seen him, hands shoved into his pockets in the moonlight, uneasy, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was—it struck her suddenly—still handsome. He was still attractive, despite his failures, despite his squandered promise and derelict lifestyle.
And for a moment she felt an unexpected jealousy claw its way up in her—as if Neil were someone she was still in love with but had only just recognized. Too late.
But no—she rejected this. She could not see him that way. Certainly not after the other night. It was the utter foreignness of the whole experience—the complete impossibility of doing something as careless and foolish as having an affair—that hurt the most. Not that she cared so deeply about the behind-her-back circumstances of it—but almost precisely that she didn’t. It didn’t matter. It served only to emphasize the stark life-and-death difference of the planet she now inhabited. A planet in which such frivolities as sex and marital strife and attraction had no place. It filled her with a desperate sense of sadness for her old life.
In the mirror across from her, her face looked wooden, unchanged despite the enormous currents rocking through her.
Now there were footsteps on the stairs. Laura.
“I brought you a glass of water—are you okay?” she asked. “What happened?”
Jenny stared at her friend. “You slept with him, didn’t you?” she said. It came out with remarkable dispassion.
“With…?” Laura colored, and then darted a glance at Jenny’s eyes. “Shit!”
For a moment the room filled with silence.
“I was going to tell you—” Laura said. “I kept meaning—I just didn’t know if you would be…mad. It was stupid—I mean, I don’t even know why—”
Laura’s distress calmed Jenny. “It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
Laura crossed the carpet and sat next to Jenny on the bed. She took her hand and, predictably, there were tears in her eyes. “I should have told you.”
Jenny shook her head, her composure growing with Laura’s discomfort. “I made a mistake,” she said.
“A mistake?” Laura looked taken aback.
“Creating the situation I did with Neil. Making him stay out of our lives.”
From outside there was the sound of voices—Chrissy, Mac, Judy Callahan…Miranda. Behind them, the alarm clock ticked.
“You did what you thought made the most sense,” Laura said finally.
“Did you know—did you think it was stupid all along?” It was possible, it occurred to Jenny, that this was the first time she had ever asked Laura’s opinion of the matter. Their conversation had always involved telling—Jenny telling Laura what she was going to do, Laura listening, nodding, reflecting back.
“Not stupid, no.” Laura sighed and wiped her nose. She stood and walked over to the window.
“For him?”
Laura looked back at her. “For everyone.”
Jenny nodded slowly. It was difficult. It was unrealistic. How could she, in this of all things, have had such a breach in judgment? She, Jenny Callahan, whose fiercest skill in life was to estimate and plan correctly?
“Jenny?” Judy Callahan’s voice banged up the stairs. “Everyone’s waiting for the cake!�
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“Coming,” Jenny called back through the closed door automatically.
“Shit.” Laura sighed. But then she grabbed Jenny’s arm with a sudden fierceness. “It’ll be fine, though,” she said, looking directly into her eyes. “Everything will be fine.”
“Will it?” Jenny asked.
“It will!” Laura said, drawing her friend into an embrace. “I promise. It will be all right.”
Later, when the quiches were portioned out, the Bloody Marys drained, the ambrosia (who would have thought?) finished, Judy Callahan brought out a bottle of champagne and a tray of fancy crystal flutes that Jenny herself never would have taken onto the flagstone terrace, though she did not protest. The party was unfolding around her as if on the other side of a thick, muffling blanket. Judy handed the bottle to her daughter proudly. “Can’t have a birthday without champagne!”
Jenny untwisted the foil and wire dutifully and then handed the bottle on to Mac, who was standing beside her. In one smooth motion, his big thumbs pressed the cork out and it popped against the house with a dramatic bang.
Jenny held out the first flute for him to pour.
“Toast!” he demanded rollickingly, reminding her of the cocky business school student she had first known him as.
“Toast?” Jenny echoed, and as she said it, she felt panicky. A toast? To what exactly?
She looked around at the expectant faces—some (like Laura’s and Elise’s) displaying comprehension of the uncomfortable challenge of Mac’s demand, and others (her mother’s and Chrissy’s) simply smiling enthustically. Jeremy, it seemed to her, was actually paying attention, for once. He was looking at her, his expression expectant—neither joyful nor afraid. Just waiting.
A warm wind rustled the treetops, and from the grass behind her Jenny could hear the buzz of insects. The plastic Elmo tablecloth trembled.
“To Colin,” Jenny said, forcing herself to move her lips. “To turning one. And”—she hesitated, waiting for words to save her from this precipice, “to this moment. All of us. Right here—” Before. She stopped the word on her tongue. It was not to be spoken. But it was the point, wasn’t it?
Perfect Life Page 28
