The dull ache that had settled in Wendy’s temples during the earlier part of the afternoon had now given way to a pounding headache. She felt a burning sensation behind her eyes. Then she noticed that her present rested on top of what was left of the pile. On account of the money and effort she’d put into organizing the shower, Wendy had felt justified in buying Daphne a token gift. In light of Courtney’s extravagance, however, she was seized by a familiar fear of looking cheap. “Wait, give that to me,” she said, lunging for the package. “I think I left the price tag on.” Wendy pried the present out of Daphne’s hand. Then, yet again, she fled the room.
• • •
This time, Wendy walked past the kitchen and into the bedroom, past the bed on which she and Adam had failed to create a human life, and into the bathroom. She locked the door and sat down on the toilet. Through the shower window, she could hear the relentless whine of highway traffic. How many cars there were, she thought—and how many people inside them, each with their own stories of heartache and triumph and disappointment. And how random it was that she’d been assigned this life. Half-imagining she was Daphne and half-believing her own excuse, Wendy began to loosen the tissue on her gift, carefully unfastening the tape so she could seal it back up.
The baby “sleep sack” she uncovered looked even less substantial than she remembered it being. Lifting it by its minuscule shoulders, Wendy thought back to the infant who might have filled it, the infant she could have had while still in college. Back then, it had never even occurred to her to go through with the pregnancy. It was ironic to think about now, ironic without being sad. It was too many years later for that. She’d only just started the spring semester of her senior year. By the time she missed her period, she and Evan Suarez had already broken up. After all this time, it was mostly Daphne’s absence in the aftermath that had stayed with her. Wendy had asked Daphne to come to the clinic with her—she’d trusted no one else with the information that she was pregnant—but Daphne had been having one of her periodic “migraines.” Wendy still recalled the pity in the nurses’ eyes when she’d asked them if they had the phone number of a taxi service, the shame she’d felt at being there alone.
Why couldn’t Daphne just have taken two Tylenol? Wendy now wondered. And what if the truth was that Daphne couldn’t bear for anyone else to be the center of attention—not just the one with all the luck, but the one with all the pain, too? She pictured Daphne in the Wonder Woman costume she’d worn for Halloween that fall, pretending to be embarrassed about how short her short-shorts were. (“I feel like the whole world is staring at my butt!” Wendy recalled Daphne saying.) She longed suddenly for revenge.
She knew it was an immature impulse. The right thing to do was to wait for another day, when the two were alone and Wendy was feeling calmer. Then, in an open, nonaccusatory way, she’d share her hurt feelings with Daphne, remembering to begin all her sentences with “I,” as opposed to “You,” as in, “You’re a duplicitous megalomaniac.” Marcia used to encourage Wendy to “own” her negative emotions. As if they were handbags or cars or pets. But it seemed to Wendy that Marcia had missed the point: there was no use in acting responsibly toward people when your goal was to punish and humiliate them.
Just then, Wendy noticed a black pen lying on the windowsill. No doubt Adam had been doing Sudoku, his favorite new time waster. Maybe she would write something on the sleep sack, she thought. Only, what? Wendy lifted the pen off the sill and lowered herself onto the bath mat. Then she closed the toilet seat and laid the sleep sack on top of it. Her heart was beating madly, and she hardly knew what she was doing as she scrawled the words VANITY PROJECT in capital letters across the front of the garment. A dim voice in her head said, “Wendy—you’re going insane.” Not unconvinced by her own genius, she ignored it and rewrapped the present.
• • •
Wendy entered the living room to find Daphne saying, “He is too adorable,” about yet another teddy bear with a grosgrain ribbon tied around its neck. She’d finally exhausted the pile of presents. Wendy placed her gift at Daphne’s feet and once again claimed her seat on the arm of the sofa. It seemed to her as if twenty minutes passed—though it was probably only two—before Daphne lifted the package into her lap. “It’s just a little something,” Wendy told her, just as Courtney had.
“Wen, you really didn’t have to get me anything,” Daphne said. She began to unstick the tape that Wendy had only just refastened. She lifted the sleep sack into the air. “Oohh,” she started to say. Then she fell silent, her face frozen midway between a smile and the vacant stare of the stricken.
“Are you okay, Daf?” asked Sara.
Blood rushed to Wendy’s cheeks.
Daphne slowly refolded the sleep sack and placed it back in its tissue paper. Then she began to breathe in an exaggerated fashion, her jaw extended, her mouth ajar. “So let me get this straight,” she began in a tremulous voice. “Just because you’re Little Miss Political-Action-Career-Woman and I’m not, that gives you the right to mock the greatest achievement of my adult life?”
Wendy felt as if she’d walked onto the stage of the wrong play, only to find her lines useless. She wanted to yell, “How do you think I feel being the only one here without a baby?” But it occurred to her suddenly that what she’d done was more heinous than anything Daphne was guilty of. “It was just a stupid joke,” she mumbled instead.
“Hilarious,” said Daphne in a scathing voice. She turned to the rest of them. “In case you’re wondering what happened, my old and supposedly dear friend Wendy has taken it upon herself to inscribe the phrase ‘vanity project’ on the sleep suit she intends my infant son or daughter to wear.”
There were murmurs of confusion and disapproval.
“That is so psycho,” muttered Courtney.
Daphne repeated the phrase in a caustic tone. Then she let loose a withering laugh. But whatever had amused her didn’t last long. Her eyes were as slender as crescent moons when she turned back to Wendy and asked, “So—what?—is that supposed to be some kind of critique of my personality? Like you think I do everything I do just to flatter myself—is that it? Or is it just that I’m not allowed to have children because you can’t get pregnant?”
Wendy felt like crawling under the Indian bedspread that doubled as the sofa slipcover (and upon which Daphne currently sat). What if Daphne was right? she wondered. What if Wendy was just jealous? And what if Daphne really did have a debilitating migraine that day back in college? As Wendy stared into her best friend’s twisted face, she began to doubt the content of her own rage as well. In truth, the feeling Daphne increasingly elicited was older than their friendship—the feeling that no matter how far Wendy came, she’d never catch up. She’d always be racing to board a train that had already left the station. In her mind’s eye, she could see the passengers in the back car, their noses pressed to the glass and resembling pigs’ snouts, their mouths stretched wide with laughter, their hands waving good-bye. See you later, if you ever get there, she heard them calling to her.
Wendy doubted she ever would get there. That was her fear, and her fear had become real to her. Once, she’d seen life as a wonderful absurdity. Now the race to excel and to acquire had become all-consuming. Even humor had fallen out of her repertoire. “Really—I didn’t mean anything by it,” she offered helplessly.
Without explanation, Daphne rose from her seat and strode toward the kitchen. Moments later, she reappeared with Wendy’s two-pound bag of flour pressed to her perfect breasts. Wendy had meant to put the flour back in the cupboard before her guests arrived—she’d used it to make the cookies—but hadn’t found the time. “Honestly?” Daphne began again in a shrill voice while waddling back toward Wendy. “For fifteen fucking years I’ve been putting up with your hostility. And not just putting up with it, but trying to make you happy, when I haven’t been busy tiptoeing around you, worried I was going to say the wrong thing and insult you. Your insecurity has been, like, a full-time j
ob. And what’s my reward? You gave the most obnoxious wedding toast in the history of wedding toasts. I’m sorry to have burdened you with my problems all these years. I thought we were the kind of friends who could tell each other everything, but I guess not. I also thought you’d be happy for me when things finally started going well in my life. But you’ve been a complete cunt to me ever since I met Jonathan”—in her peripheral vision, Wendy could see Courtney covering Miles’s ears—“and you know what? I’ve had it! FUCK”—she paused for effect—“YOU! Fuck your stupid baby shower. And fuck your chocolate chip cookies.” Daphne took another step toward Wendy. Then she overturned the flour bag on Wendy’s head, momentarily blinding her to all reality but the mushroom cloud that swirled around her head like a nimbus of scorn.
• • •
Wendy could only barely make out the identities of the women who rushed to Daphne’s aid. Not that Wendy could entirely blame them. Daphne was the one carrying innocent life, while Wendy’s belly was filled with nothing more sacred than sangria. Plus, Daphne had begun to weep, while Wendy stood motionless and quiet and, for the moment at least, unable to form an intelligent thought.
“Daffie, it’s going to be all right,” Wendy heard Jenny Kenar(?) saying.
“Do you want some water?” asked Hannah Dingo(?).
“Daphne, we’re taking you home,” announced Courtney. (There was no mistaking her snarl.)
“Okay,” Daphne choked out between sobs.
Finally, the mushroom cloud began to dissipate, and Wendy’s guests again became recognizable to her. Daphne was already halfway to the door, her slender arms looped through Alyssa’s and Courtney’s. The latter held Miles against her hip as if he were a designer handbag and stared backward at Wendy as if she were a suspected mugger. Jenny Kenar, Jenn Gilmore, Hannah, and Audrey stuffed Daphne’s presents into shopping bags. Pamela, Gretchen, and Sara and their respective offspring lingered between the hall and the living room, looking uncomfortable. Naturally, Lucas had begun to cry again. “Do you want help cleaning up?” asked Pamela, clearly the most traumatized of the bunch, if only because conflict was alien to her.
“It’s fine, really,” Wendy told her. “You should all go home.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” Wendy was thinking that she needed water. Flour had become affixed to the roof of her mouth.
She was also thinking that she couldn’t wait for everyone to leave, especially the babies. Somehow, with their googly eyes and utter incomprehension, they made her the most ashamed of all.
8.
TO WENDY’S SURPRISE, after she cleaned up the apartment, then herself in the shower, the flour pouring off her head in creamy rivulets, she felt okay—not great, by any means, but not terrible, either. Not as bad as she might have thought she’d feel. She felt like a pariah, of course. At the same time there was a certain relief in having disgraced herself and in having given up all claims to respectability or decorousness. It was so exhausting trying to get along with everyone all the time.
Wendy felt relieved, as well, to think she’d never again have to admire Daphne’s house, husband, or appearance; never have to tell her how unbelievably adorable her newborn was sure to be, either. In retrospect, it struck Wendy that their friendship might have ended years earlier had Wendy not felt obligated to stick around. In light of Daphne’s recent outburst, however, that sense of duty had fallen away; there was no need to feel responsible for someone who hated your guts.
It was the sight of Adam walking in the door at six o’clock that once again filled Wendy with doubt and shame. “How was the game?” she said, before he could ask her about the shower.
“Great,” he said. “Delgado hit a two-run homer in the ninth and won it for New York. How was the babyfest?”
Wendy knew there was no point in keeping what had happened a secret. Adam would find out eventually. “Actually, it ended early,” she told him. “Though not before Daphne dumped a bag of flour on my head and told me I’d spent the past fifteen years doing my best to ruin her life.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!” cried Adam. Was there ever a man whom gossip excited more? Wendy thought irritably.
Then again, even Wendy had to admit that their blowup was a story made for retelling. She could already hear her guests regaling their other friends: You won’t believe what happened at Daphne Uberoff ’s baby shower.… “I gave her a baby sleep sack with the phrase ‘vanity project’ written across the chest,” said Wendy. “It was a joke, but Daphne didn’t find it funny.”
Adam squinted in disbelief. “You wrote that, or it already came written on it?”
“I wrote it.”
“Daphne’s finally straightened her life out and found a little happiness in the world, and you’re accusing her of being a hideous narcissist? Are you out of your frigging mind?”
Wendy was willing to believe that what she’d done was hostile bordering on inexcusable. But she hadn’t told Adam so he’d make her feel even worse. She’d already been “floured.” What further punishment did he have in mind for her? Fitting her into stocks in the town square? “No—apparently just a terrible person,” she answered. “Never mind the thousands of hours of my life I’ve spent listening to Daphne go on about her problems and generally trying to be a supportive friend to someone who rarely if ever asks me a single thing about myself.”
“Woooo—calm down,” said Adam. “I’m just trying to understand what happened.”
“What’s it to you?” asked Wendy.
“It isn’t anything to me! I just think it’s a little ridiculous to throw a party for someone and then use the opportunity to insult the person. I mean, either you decide to be friends with her or you decide not to. It’s like you want it both ways.”
Wendy felt her temper flaring. But she’d already alienated her best friend; she figured she’d leave her husband for another day. “I don’t want anything both ways,” she said as evenly as she could. “I just want to stop talking about this, not least because it’s not really any of your business.”
“Fine,” said Adam.
Just because you’re close friends now with Daphne doesn’t mean I have to be, anymore.”
“I thought you wanted to drop the subject?”
“I do,” said Wendy. Daphne and Adam’s receiving-line exchange had crept back to the surface of her consciousness.
Wendy was still puzzled by what had happened to make her husband feel the need to defend Daphne at every turn.
Wendy wasn’t sure what reaction to expect from their mutual friends—whether they’d shun her for her behavior or feel compelled to take a side (presumably Daphne’s). A part of Wendy was hurt that no one had come to her defense after Daphne opened her gift. (What she’d written wasn’t that bad, was it?) At the very least, Wendy figured, she still had Maura as a friend. That said, Maura had recently vanished to Mexico to “do research,” even though, the last time Wendy checked, Maura’s dissertation was on the Scottish Enlightenment.
A few days after being “floured,” Wendy received the following email from Gretchen:
wen,
just wanted to see how you were doing. i’m sorry about how the shower ended on sunday. if it seemed like daphne overreacted, i think secretly she’s really nervous about having a baby. can’t say i entirely blame her, since motherhood basically ruined my life, and i’d rather feed starving children in africa than my own in brooklyn. there, i said it. does that make me a bad person? please don’t answer that. but, seriously, i’d be institutionalized if it weren’t for dorothea.… meanwhile, i’m sure d’s big film news—assume you heard by now?—will go far to boost her mood and confidence. to be even more honest, i’m feeling a little envious myself. can’t remember the last time someone threw money at me for doing basically NOTHING. (maybe never?) but, then, i work in the non-profit sector, so I’m not supposed to care about stuff like that. (yeah, sure.)
xoxog
p.s. remind me—are you guys headed anywhere
fun in august??
Wendy appreciated Gretchen’s show of support. She also appreciated Gretchen’s honesty regarding both her failure as a parent and her envy of Daphne’s good fortune. As for the basis of Gretchen’s envy, Wendy knew that for the sake of her mental health, she ought to refrain from asking her to elaborate. But curiosity won out over self-protection, as it usually did. Wendy wrote back:
Dear Gretch, Thanks for writing. I’m sorry too about what happened at the shower, but I think Daphne and I were headed for a split one way or another. Granted, I could have made that happen in a more grown-up fashion. Anyway, it’s a little late now.… Meanwhile, I’m sorry to hear you’re not enjoying motherhood more. Though it’s probably good for me to hear it isn’t all just a collection of “Kodak moments.” Finally, no, I didn’t hear about D’s “film news.” Pray tell. XW
Gretchen promptly replied:
basically, this three-page treatment d wrote got optioned for a half million dollars by some division of warner brothers. as far as I know, it’s about two best friends who are really competitive and try to seduce each other’s husbands. (am hoping/assuming she was not thinking of the two of us, since—yuck—I’m so not interested in sleeping with jonathan! though if rob reciprocated d’s advances, am not sure i’d be entirely surprised, since it’s NOT LIKE WE HAVE SEX ANYMORE.) anyway, daphne is apparently going to be writing the screenplay, too. so she’ll get even more $ if the movie is ever made. in short, it doesn’t look like the uberoff-sonnenbergs are going to be hurting for cash anytime soon. not that they were before. not sure if you know that the sonnenberg elders own a renowned collection of old master paintings, including several rembrandts??…
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