I'm So Happy for You

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  Soon, Adam appeared in the kitchen, guitar in hand. “Hey, managing editor!” he said. (Wendy had called him that morning to tell him the good news.)

  “Hey, Bobby,” said Wendy.

  “Bobby?” said Adam.

  “Dylan.”

  “Oh.” He laughed. “Just keeping the old fingers limber, you know?”

  “Of course.”

  “So, how’s the new job?”

  “Great,” Wendy told him. “Except Missing Linc forgot to tell me I was getting assigned a ridiculously beautiful NYU intern. I almost had a heart attack when I saw her.”

  “Cool!” said Adam, his eyebrows jumping.

  “The worst part is—she’s really nice. Though she did make fun of me for having a home phone.”

  “Oh, come on.” Adam took Wendy into his arms and twirled her, his guitar behind her back. “You’re the sexiest editor Barricade’s ever had.”

  “What you mean is, I’m the only female editor at the magazine now, my competition being a bunch of middle-aged Marxists with visible butt cracks.”

  “Aw—you’re too hard on yourself. Not to mention on the Marxists. They’re people, too. Listen—what do you say we go celebrate tonight?”

  “And blow some of my raise?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I thought I’d send the extra money to Visa every month.”

  “Come on, you have to have fun sometimes.”

  Easy for you to say, Wendy thought but refrained from uttering out loud. Then again, Adam had a point, she thought: they hadn’t been out to eat in weeks. What’s more, leaving the house would get him to put his guitar away. “I guess we could take a car service to Blue Ribbon Sushi or something. There’s nothing around here.” Wendy couldn’t stop herself from pointing that last fact out—and in doing so reminding Adam that she was still bitter about having to live on “No Prospect Avenue,” as she’d recently dubbed the block.

  Over the previous few months, she’d done her best to cheer the place up—painting the walls of the living room pale yellow, hanging wooden blinds, bringing home fresh flowers from the grocery store whenever she remembered. But nothing seemed to work. Home was supposed to be a retreat. The new apartment felt more like a highway rest stop. (Arriving home, Wendy always half-expected to find a food court at the top of the stairs, raising the tantalizing question: the Nachos BellGrande at Taco Bell or a slice of pizza from Sbarro?)

  “There’s always the White Castle on Thirty-second,” offered Adam.

  “Can you please not depress me!” Wendy was suddenly livid. That he could joke about such things!

  “I don’t see why you hate it here so much,” said Adam.

  “Because it’s depressing,” said Wendy.

  “Maybe you’re just depressed and taking it out on the neighborhood.”

  A part of Wendy longed to escalate the dispute—to tell Adam that if she was depressed, it was because he was depressing her. But again, she stopped herself. “What do you say we drop this conversation?” she asked.

  “Fine with me,” he answered.

  “Good. I’m going to go get changed.” As Wendy exited the kitchen, she called back to him, “How’s your dad today?”

  “Good, thanks,” Adam called back. Ron was at home now, with a round-the-clock nurse attending to him. He and Adam spoke on the phone every day. From what Wendy could gather, the conversations meant a lot to both of them.

  Wendy had also begun the new year trying to be more appreciative of Daphne’s friendship, if only because she suspected that the resentment she increasingly felt toward her best friend had more to do with her coveting of Daphne’s house, ring, and husband’s earning power than it did with Daphne’s arrogance, insensitivity, egocentrism, or insincerity. (Though the latter attributes were arguably at play as well.)

  Renovations on Daphne’s brownstone had begun the second week of January. The second week of February, Daphne called to invite Wendy to come see the progress. Wendy knew she’d be racked with jealousy. She was also curious to see the splendor in which Daphne would soon be living. And would Daphne take the living room in a midcentury modernist direction, with Saarinen womb chairs and brushed-steel tripod lamps with oversize white shades and maybe even a Warhol lithograph or two? Or would she veer in a more traditional vein, with Persian carpets, potted ferns, and burgundy leather club chairs with brass nail heads angled sportily against the hearth? And what about the kitchen? Would it feature country-style glass-front cabinetry or something sleeker and more opaque, perhaps with elongated horizontal pulls in brushed nickel, or maybe even no hardware at all? Wendy agreed to visit the following Saturday.

  “I’m so happy you’re coming!” Daphne declared. “I desperately need your help decorating. You’re always so good at stuff like that.”

  “Please,” protested Wendy, who knew for a fact that Daphne’s statement was false. “I have no talent for anything visual.” Even so—and even as Wendy reminded herself of Daphne’s propensity for spewing utter flimflam—she felt flattered by the suggestion. It had always been like that, she thought resignedly: the grasping, aspiring side of her brain winning out over the level-headed one.

  The day before Wendy was due to visit Daphne, which happened to be Valentine’s Day, yet another unwelcome menstrual period greeted her in the salmon-colored ladies’ room that Barricade shared with the Youth-net student exchange office down the hall. (On occasion, gorgeous Estonian teens could be spotted shuffling toward the elevator in skin-tight stone-washed jeans.) Wendy had been trying to conceive for twelve cycles. According to modern medical science, she was infertile. Devastated by the verdict, she teared up on her way back to her office. Just outside the door, Alyson tried to intercept her—something about not being able to locate the current issue of Dissent—but Wendy gave herself permission to be rude, if only this one time, and kept walking.

  She shut the door behind her and sat down at her desk. On the upside, she thought, after work she and Sara were making their annual pilgrimage to the circus. One look at the lady who hung by her hair always filled Wendy with awe and wonder at the mysteries of the world. Still fighting off tears, she dialed the number of her new ob-gyn, Dr. Wendy Kung. (Wendy Murman’s old ob-gyn, like her old therapist, had stopped accepting Barricade’s bare-bones insurance policy, CarePlus Medical, after the company announced it would no longer reimburse for the removal of any cysts or growths unless they were already cancerous; but they couldn’t be too cancerous, because that meant you were already going to die, so why bother trying to save you.) To Wendy’s further agitation, however, Dr. Kung’s secretary announced that Dr. Kung’s next available appointment wasn’t until late July.

  Wendy could feel her internal stopwatch ticking even faster than usual. “It’s actually an emergency,” she told the woman. “I can feel some kind of hard mass in my pelvis.”

  Dr. Kung’s secretary sighed testily before squeezing Wendy into Dr. Kung’s schedule for Monday.

  Wendy hung up the phone feeling more relieved than she did guilty. She found an email message from Gretchen waiting for her:

  wen, thanxs for the sweet note! i know, it’s RIDICULOUS that you still haven’t met the twinnies. but, sadly, afraid it will have to wait another week, as i’m actually on a plane headed to new guinea. but let’s definitely schedule something for when i get back. if you can stand take-out, maybe you could come over for dinner one night?? though if you want to see/meet the babes, it might have to be on the early side. though, to be honest, am not entirely sure what time they go to bed these days. to be even more honest, have been so busy at work lately that i’ve hardly seen the babes myself; all i can say is: THANK GOD for our nanny, dorothea. she just might be the greatest human being alive today. i’m dying for her to move in. actually, she’s staying over six nights a week already, but i’d love for her to do sundays, too. unfortunately, she has her own family to look after. shit, am being told to shut off all electronic equipment. have a great week. luv u, g

  It
wasn’t Gretchen’s fault that Wendy still wasn’t pregnant, Wendy reminded herself. It was also true that Gretchen had had a difficult time conceiving. Yet, Wendy found herself increasingly scandalized by Gretchen’s blasé attitude toward parenting. Gretchen had planned on taking three months off after Lola and Liam were born. Three months had quickly turned into three weeks. Sara claimed to have seen her on her headset, cold-calling Goodwill ambassadors to the United Nations, while still in the delivery room. Or did Gretchen know something that Wendy didn’t know? Were babies actually really boring and annoying, even babies who didn’t cry all day long like Lucas Rose? Wendy sometimes wondered if she actually wanted children, or if she just wanted to keep up.

  She wrote back:

  New Guinea??? You definitely get around, my friend. Meanwhile, glad to hear things are going so well with the babies/ babysitter. Call me when you get back to town and we’ll make a plan. Am happy to come to your place. Also, I may need the name of your fertility doc. (The business of conception not happening on its own, alas.) Or maybe I should just steal one of your kids! (Just kidding.) XW

  For dinner that evening, Adam made Wendy a hamburger in the shape of a heart. Wendy thought it was cute—sort of.

  To Wendy’s astonishment, a Valentine’s Day gift arrived from her mother as well—an IOU for a night at the St. Regis hotel. The accompanying note read, “Dear Wendell. To make ends meet, my student and research assistant, Douglas Bondy, works as a bellhop here. So if thanks are due, please direct them to him. Mom. p.s. Perhaps you were unaware that you were conceived on the second floor??”

  Wendy’s first reaction—after her initial shock that her mother had bought her a Valentine’s Day present—was irritation at her mother’s over-crediting of Douglas Bondy. Her second reaction was horror at the reference to her own, sordid beginnings. Also, what were her hairy hippie parents doing in the St. Regis? Upon further reflection, however, she was overcome by gratitude for her mother’s generosity. What had gotten into her?

  The snow began to fall on Friday evening. It fell all night. To Wendy, gazing out her bedroom window the next morning, Brooklyn appeared to have been put to sleep under a giant down comforter. That, or Adam’s screenplay’s “high concept” had come true, and New York had fallen victim to a surprise nuclear attack. The glimpses of jutting steel aside, the view was almost pastoral. Even more disorientingly, the Prospect Expressway was quiet. Wendy considered canceling her trip to Daphne’s house and spending the day hiding under the covers with a good book and pretending she was in Vermont. But she figured she might as well get the visit over with.

  By late morning, the snow had stopped and the sun had come out, but it was still cold and windy. Crossing Fourth Avenue, Wendy felt as if she were being stabbed by hundreds of tiny daggers. At the same time, she found it invigorating to be outside, braving the elements; to have her thoughts dominated by nothing more complicated than the desire to keep warm and to move forward.

  The R train, which was the only subway in close walking distance to Wendy’s apartment, didn’t stop anywhere near Daphne’s new house. So Wendy got out at Court Street and trudged the rest of the way there through snow, ice, and sludge. Forty minutes later, her feet drenched, she arrived at Amity Street between Clinton and Henry.

  Genteel and secluded in feel, the block was lined with four-story brick and brownstone town houses in the Greek Revival and Italianate styles. Before she left her own apartment, Wendy had written Daphne’s address on a scrap of paper and stuck it in her coat pocket. As she struggled now to unfold the paper, her fingers numb, she thought of those prehistoric people whose remains were occasionally discovered in remote tundras buried beneath three feet of ice, but with their flesh and even their hair miraculously still attached to their bones. Finally, she managed to open the slip. The numbers had bled into one another. But from what Wendy could decipher, she was already standing out front.

  Daphne and Jonathan’s brownstone managed to be both charming and imposing. A high stoop with a decorative iron-work balustrade led to a pair of carved wood double doors that had been painted a shiny shade of red. The doors were flanked by rectangular pilasters etched with leaves. On the top step, a dwarf spruce fashioned like a smoke ring poked out of a gently oxidized stone urn. In the tiny front garden, an old-fashioned streetlamp, looking like something out of Charles Dickens’s London, shot out of the snow. Someone had already shoveled both the stoop and the bluestone walk-way that led to the lower entrance. On the parlor-floor level, cast-iron guard railings that matched both the balustrade and the areaway fence that separated the house from the sidewalk protected what appeared to be floor-to-ceiling windows. A work permit had been taped to the inside of the window closest to the door. It’s just a house, Wendy reminded herself—just a pile of bricks and beams—as she climbed the stairs and buzzed a discreet bell tucked behind one of the pilasters.

  Daphne came to the door in a bright pink velour hoodie and matching sweatpants, her feet ensconced in shearling slippers, her hair pinned up with a rhinestone-studded butterfly clip. (Only Daphne could make tacky look cute.) “Wen—you are such a HERO for coming out in this cold!” she declared. She threw her arms around Wendy. “I was sure you were going to cancel, and I was already so bummed out about it.”

  “Well, here I am,” said Wendy.

  “God, you must be SO frozen.”

  “It’s cold out there. I won’t lie to you.”

  Daphne was always so friendly that it made it hard ever to be mad at her, Wendy was thinking as she followed Daphne through a second set of antique doors and into a hallway illuminated by a brass chandelier. Wendy recalled the time in college when, for once, she’d been the bigger mess of the two. Wendy’s first real boyfriend, a premed student from Mamaroneck named Evan, had broken up with her without explanation. Daphne had plied her with drinks, told her that men were jerks, and proposed that the two of them go to the movies “and forget about all [their] guy problems.” Daphne had been so sweet, so reassuring. Wendy had felt so loved and protected. But an hour later, Daphne was suddenly putting on her coat and saying, “I totally forgot I said I’d meet Josh. Are you going to be okay if I go out for a few hours? I promise I’ll be back soon.” (Face squinched up.)

  What could Wendy say? “I’ll be fine,” Wendy had told her. “You go have fun.”

  At the rear end of the hall was a graceful curving staircase with a polished mahogany banister and a thick red runner; to the left was a third set of double doors. “First, let me take your coat,” Daphne said, arms outstretched.

  “Oh, thanks,” said Wendy, handing over her parka.

  “Do you want sweatpants or anything?” Daphne asked while Wendy pried the first of two snow boots off her feet.

  “I should be okay as long as I get these things off,” Wendy said, tugging at the second. Finally, both boots came off. She set them down on a mat next to the interior doors, then made an admittedly exaggerated production out of shaking her feet, frozen though they were.

  “Poor you,” said Daphne, lips puffed out and down like a clown’s.

  “That’s much better,” said Wendy, lapping up the mixture of pity and attention that Daphne was currently lavishing on her.

  “You really are such a good friend for coming over in this weather.”

  “Oh, please—let’s see the house!”

  “Weeelllll…” Daphne ushered Wendy through the third set of doors and into the parlor.

  It was the most gorgeous construction site that Wendy had ever seen. There was paper all over the floor, and paint cans, rollers, and trays on top of that. But even unfinished, its plaster walls still covered with primer, the room—massive and sun speckled, its fourteen-foot ceiling decorated with lacy plasterwork—was a masterpiece. Two white marble fireplace mantels with scalloped edges and elaborately carved keystones jutted out of one wall. A humongous gilt mirror leaned against the other. A crystal chandelier descended from a plaster medallion on the ceiling like a sprig of perfectly ripe gra
pes.

  “So here’s our future living room!” Daphne announced brightly. “I was really hoping they’d be further along by now, but everyone says renovations always cost twice as much and take twice as long as you planned. So what can you do?” She sighed and shrugged at the same time, as if it wasn’t actually that big a deal. (As if she had both time and money to spare.) “Anyway. I think we’re going to go with this weird color in the front parlor called ‘lobster bisque.’ Beige just seemed kind of ‘nineties.’ And white seemed too boring. And there was no way Jonathan was going to go for actual pink. Also, we’re getting this huge Rug Company rug from Jonathan’s parents as a wedding present, and it has all these reds and oranges in it. So we needed something to match that. Obviously, the trim is going to be white. But, seriously”—she turned to Wendy, her nose crinkled—“does bisque sound really fugly?”

  “First of all,” Wendy said, feeling in that moment that honesty was the best policy, “let me just say that this place is insane. I mean, it’s like a museum! The fireplaces. The mirrors. The ceiling. It’s amazing.”

  “I love this room, too.” Daphne smiled. “I just hope we’re happy here.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be happy?” asked Wendy, who thought she saw a hint of doubt pass across Daphne’s face. But maybe she was only imagining it, wishing it were true.…

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Daphne slapped the air. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just nervous about the paint color!” She laughed. “But, really, does bisque sound gross?”

  Now it was Wendy’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know,” she said. In fact, the color did sound a little garish to her. “I guess I’d have to see the shade. Do you have one of those color strips?”

  “I think I have one upstairs,” said Daphne. “But first, come see the kitchen.” She took hold of Wendy’s forearm. “Or, I should really say—the place where the kitchen might one day be!” She laughed again as she led Wendy to the back of the parlor, past what would surely be the dining room. (Daphne would probably furnish it with some ten-foot-long quasi-rustic monastery table, Wendy thought.) “Meanwhile, we’re thinking of going with wheat-colored taffeta drapes for these back windows,” Daphne continued.