by Nancy Thayer
“You’ve got a point,” David admitted, and he didn’t look happy when he said it.
“I’m exhausted,” Alison said. And I’d like to punch a hole in the wall, she thought, but smothered her anger. “Let’s talk to the girls this week. We’ll get it settled.”
“Sure.” David turned off his bedside lamp and slid down onto his pillow.
Alison did the same. And she was the one to lean over and kiss David good night. And then they both turned on their sides, lying back-to-back, staring at the dark.
From: Alison
To: Jane and Felicity
Subject: Wedding frocks
David said Poppy’s worried about wearing a knee-length dress at our wedding because she has terrible varicose veins from her pregnancy. Says that by September, the veins will look like worms crawling up her legs. She would like to wear a long gown and she wants us all to wear long gowns so she isn’t the odd man (woman) out.
Advice? We all want this to be a happy family event.
Love, Mom
From: Felicity
To: Jane and Mom
Subject: Worms
I know how she feels. I don’t get varicose veins, but toward the end of my pregnancies, my hair got thin and oily and I got blotches on my face that went away after the baby was born. Does she get blotches on her face?
I’m thinking about possible alternatives to short/long gowns.
xo Felicity
From: Jane
To: Mom and Felicity
Subject: Really?
Mom. This is your wedding. Poppy can’t dictate what you or we wear. We have already chosen our dresses. She is David’s attendant, not yours. I thought she was a smart executive for David’s firm. She sounds like a little girl trying to get her own way.
xoJ
From: Alison
To: Jane and Felicity
Subject: Wedding
You both know I’m not as technologically advanced as you are, but I worry TERRIBLY about anyone else ever accidentally seeing these emails and I would be extremely grateful if we could discuss this issue without calling names or casting aspersions.
Love, Mom
* * *
—
Jane and Scott had agreed to meet at Amarela for dinner. Jane knew they weren’t going for the excellent food and heady Brazilian drinks made with cachaça. They both wanted to talk and they knew they would behave more calmly out in public, but if they raised their voices, no one in the restaurant would notice, even if Jane stood up and socked Scott in the nose.
Not that she would.
But she kind of wanted to. Once again, when she returned from Nantucket, Scott had been obsessed with work, and grumpy because of it. She’d seen him through these intense work periods before, and he’d lived with her when she went through them, when sometimes a case got so sticky and complicated and huge and full of details that her head felt it would explode if she had to recall one more minor point. It was like cramming for exams. Afterward, Jane or Scott would collapse with relief, sleep for ten hours and eat the most delicious—and artery-clogging—food they could find. Their sense of humor would return. And their sensuality.
Scott was in one of those phases now, and she knew not to press him. On the other hand, she’d heard tales of woe from career-oriented friends who had trouble getting pregnant, and she worried about that. She was thirty-two and wanted as much time as possible to try.
She got to the restaurant before he did and was shown to a wonderful quiet table in the side room. She studied her phone—it was amusing, how all the people alone at the other tables were looking at their phones—and caught her mother’s latest email about the great gown debate.
“Hi, babe.” Scott came to their table and leaned to kiss her cheek before sitting down.
“Hi,” Jane said, smiling. She was completely aware of how women’s heads turned to watch him stride through the room, this tall, slender, dark-haired handsome man in a pinstripe suit.
Scott sat across from her. “Have you ordered our drinks?”
“Not yet. I was waiting for you.”
Scott waved the waiter over and ordered their drinks. “You’re looking really beautiful tonight, honey. I think those days on the island did you good.”
Her breath caught with surprise. He was giving her an opening into the whole summer-event discussion.
“Thanks! I got a tan. And honestly, it’s so relaxing, walking on the beach, listening to the waves crash, feeling the sun on my shoulders.”
Scott leaned back in his chair and studied Jane. “How’s work going?”
Jane shrugged. “It’s good. It’s fine. Same old, same old, reading codes and small print until my eyes cross.”
“Are you bored with it all?”
Jane took a moment to enjoy her drink. Scott might be overwhelmed with legal matters, but he was here with her now, and as relaxed as he’d been in a long time.
“Not bored at all,” she told him. “It’s routine, and you know how I like routine.”
Scott smiled, and she knew that particular smile well.
Well, there you go, Jane said to herself, you’ve walked right into his trap.
“I do know you like your routine, Jane. That’s why I’m surprised at all the changes you’re suggesting.”
One of the things she loved most about Scott was his mind. He was brilliant and cunning. But so was Jane. They had enjoyed sparring matches before, but none had mattered to her as much as this one. First, she had to decide which change to discuss. Spending their vacation on Nantucket. Or having a child. The Nantucket matter was a kind of taster for the main course. She would gladly give up Nantucket and go hiking with him if he would agree to have children.
But after all, this was not a legal conflict concerning massive corporations. This was about her life. Their lives. Their lives together.
“So. I’m suggesting—no.” She folded her hands on the table. “Scott, I want to have children. Maybe just one child. Probably just one child, because I will also want to keep working, at least part-time. I could find the name of a wonderful nanny from our friends or someone at the office. My mother might even come to stay and help. You wouldn’t have to change your routine. And we would have a child of our own.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“That’s true. You know I love you. I love our life together. But I’m sure it could be enriched immeasurably if we had a child.”
“And I’m just as certain that our lives together would be ruined.”
They stared at each other, deadlocked.
The waiter appeared at that moment, took their orders, and diplomatically disappeared.
“Here’s what I think, Jane, and hear me out.” Scott leaned forward, speaking in a low but firm tone. “I think that when you spend time with your mother and your sister, you fall under some kind of spell. You forget who you are. You forget who we are. You want to stop being you and be more like them. You lose your edges and blur into them. You’re not the Jane I know and love.”
“Wow. I had no idea you thought that. You’ll have to give me a moment to think about it.” She sipped her drink while she reflected on his words. “Okay, so first, you need to remember that you’re an only child. Your parents were both undemonstrative. They sent you to boarding school when you were twelve. So you don’t have the experience of, as you put it, blurring into your family. You’re one of the most self-contained people I know.”
Scott nodded. “I would agree with that.”
“Well, fine, but I don’t see that as a good thing. People are meant to ‘blur’ into each other. That doesn’t take anything away from you. It adds to you. It adds depth, dimension to your life, your spirit.”
“You couldn’t wait to get away from your sister. You told me she drove you crazy wit
h all her little princess ways.”
“Yes. Yes, I did say that, and I meant it. But I love her even so, and I loved her then, even when I hated her. That’s what families are like. Well, some families. Some families are terribly dysfunctional, but most families, even the dysfunctional ones, are part of what helps us understand the world. Helps us feel at home in the world.
“The thing is only now am I realizing how lucky I was with my family. I know when I met you, I told you they drove me crazy, and often they still do, but the older I get, the more I appreciate having those two women as my women. My family.”
“You’ve never talked this way before.”
“I don’t suppose I’ve ever understood this before.” She smiled at Scott and reached for his hand. “Honey, I feel like you’ve just reached into my heart and opened a new door.”
Scott smiled. “I think that’s the cachaça’s magic, not mine.”
“I’ve grown up,” Jane mused aloud. “Mother has grown older, and Felicity has grown up, too. We used to be so competitive. Not so much now. And it’s true, being around Felicity’s children has cast a spell over me—”
Scott pulled his hand away.
Jane pretended not to notice. “—but I’ve been wanting a child long before I went to Nantucket. Even though I know the time will come when our child will be longing to escape from us as much as I was when I was a teenager.”
“Our child. You’re speaking as if it’s already decided.”
Jane gave her husband her best winning smile. “Well?”
“It’s not. Of course it’s not already decided. Or, if you want to be clear, it was decided before we got married, when we agreed with each other that we didn’t want children.”
Her smile vanished. “So, I want a child, and you don’t. What shall we do?”
“Well, first of all, Jane, I want you to promise you won’t sneak us into parenthood.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, don’t stop taking the pill and just ‘forget’ to tell me. Don’t trick me.”
“Do you think I would do that? God, Scott, that’s insulting! And I’ve never been a sneak.” Jane felt hot tears spring to her eyes. “I don’t know how you can say such a thing to me.”
“That’s how I feel when you say you want a child. And please don’t cry. That’s unfair. And it won’t change my mind.”
“You’ve just moved my heart from open to shut at warp speed,” Jane said, trying to calm herself. “First you opened me up, let me get all mushy, then you knocked me down. Good legal trick, Scott, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt as distant from you as I do now. I don’t think I’ve ever disliked you as much.”
“Back at you,” Scott said.
Jane’s jaw dropped.
The waiter appeared with their appetizers. The food was beautifully prepared and displayed, but Jane wasn’t hungry. She was stunned, she was horrified at Scott’s words, which seemed much more insulting and bitter than hers. She’d never believed she could hate Scott, but that was how she felt. She hated him. If she were any other woman, she’d toss down her napkin and storm off. She’d never stormed off in her entire life.
Scott took up his knife and fork and ate. Jane sat with her hands in her lap, focusing on taking deep breaths. She knew he could do this, flip a switch and move from an argument to the next thing, eating or falling asleep, as if he were an automaton. But she also knew how she could touch him, how she could bring him to her, how they could be together. This was not a dispute over legal matters. This was deeply personal. Maybe she’d done it all backward. Maybe if he spent some time with her on the island…Maybe if he saw Felicity’s children, and Poppy’s, too, he’d be charmed. He’d fall under their spell, too.
“I don’t want to feel distant from you, Scott.” She spoke quietly, as if coaxing a lion to lie down. “You are my person. My life is with you. I don’t think I was under my family’s spell. I think it was more the magic of Nantucket. So much light and air and space, and the ocean is so vast and natural, well, of course it’s natural, but it’s natural in a way that gives me perspective on life. It’s as if the ocean is a gift, a continual gift, making the ordinary into the miraculous.”
“It certainly makes you eloquent,” Scott said, giving her a small smile.
So she had brought them out of their deadlock. She hadn’t succeeded in convincing him to have a child. But maybe she could convince him to come to the island. “I wish you’d come see it with me. I wish you’d come for just a couple of days. We could walk on the beach. We could kayak or sail…”
“All right, Jane, I’ll go to Nantucket with you. For a weekend. On one condition. That you don’t say even one word about us having a child.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” Jane told him.
“I’ve been told that before,” he said. “Now eat your bolinhos. They’re delicious.”
twelve
Noah was at his office. Alice was at day camp. Luke was trailing around behind Felicity as she performed her normal Monday tasks. Sweeping the kitchen floor. Making the beds. Doing the laundry. She wished Luke would play with his Legos, heaven knew he had enough, but Luke was a sociable kid and some days he couldn’t be happy without someone near. So she sang nonsense songs while she worked, children’s songs she’d learned when she was a child that were still sung by children.
“The ants go marching one by one, hoorah, hooray…”
She’d put in a load of children’s clothes—how many thousands of children’s socks did she wash in a week? She went into the master bathroom and hauled her clothes and Noah’s and their bedsheets and dumped them into her wicker laundry basket.
“The ants go marching two by two, hoorah, hooray…”
When her cell buzzed, she checked the caller ID. Noah! He almost never called her during the day.
Happily, she answered, “Hey, baby.”
“Felicity? This is Ingrid Black. Noah asked me to tell you that he left a folder on his desk in his house. He’d like you to bring it here right away.”
Felicity sank down onto the edge of the bathtub, breathless with shock. Why did Ingrid have Noah’s private phone? And who was she to speak to Felicity in such autocratic tones?
“Felicity, are you there?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m here,” Felicity answered faintly. All sorts of responses were swirling through her mind and she knew she’d better not say any of them. “I’ll bring the folder in. Can you tell me what it says, or what color, so I’m sure to bring—”
“It’s in his leather portfolio that he always carries. You don’t need to read anything on it, just pick it up and bring it to us.”
So now it was “bring it to us”?
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Felicity killed the call before Ingrid could say another word.
She found the leather folder in the middle of Noah’s desk. Because Ingrid had told her not to read anything, she took the time to read through some of the papers, which were filled with numbers and graphs and charts and seemed deathly boring.
“Come on, Luke, we’re going for a ride to Daddy’s office!” She took him out to his car seat, dropped her enormous bag and Noah’s folder on the passenger seat, and started the SUV.
Her phone buzzed again.
“Yes?” Felicity said warily.
Ingrid said, “Felicity, don’t worry about bringing it in to the building. I’ll be waiting at the door, watching for you. I’ll come out and get it.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Felicity said sweetly. “I’ll have Luke carry it in to Noah. Luke loves coming to his daddy’s office.” Once again she killed the connection.
Noah’s office was on a ring road off Route 128, eight lanes of frustrated drivers going eighty miles an hour. Felicity hated it, but put a happy DVD in for Luke and drove carefully in the slow lane. The tri
p there and back would use up the entire morning, so she decided to change her plans and stop by Suze’s house on the way home. Luke could play with Suze’s little girl, and Suze would love hearing about what a bossy cow Ingrid was.
She could have taken the circle drive that led to the front door of the old brick building that Noah and his partners had bought from a failed stationery supply company.
But if she did that, she guessed Ingrid would rush out and snatch the folder before Felicity could get Luke undone from his car seat. So she drove around the building and parked in a free space in the employees’ parking lot. She gave Luke the folder to carry as they went inside. Felicity knew the layout of the company because three years before—before Ingrid had even been hired—Noah and his partners, the twenty-year-old boy geniuses with prodigious chemistry skills and few hygienic abilities, had shown Felicity and his investors through the building, focusing on the labs, so spotlessly clean and sparkling with instruments that cost more than jewels.
Noah had been full of hope then. He had seemed younger. He had finished his Ph.D. at MIT, and with the help of friends, GoFundMe, and his parents’ money, had started his company Green Food. He was energetic and optimistic. These days he was simply exhausted, Felicity thought, dealing with reports and government-issued guidelines and the excruciatingly slow process of chemical trials.
Luke had been inside the building several times over the years, so when they arrived in the main hallway, Felicity squatted down at eye level with her son.
“Lukey, would you like to take this folder to your daddy’s office?”
Luke nodded, his entire chubby body jumping up and down with excitement.
“Off you go, then. Be careful. Don’t drop it. Do you remember where Daddy’s office is? Okay, sweetie—wait, no running!”
But Luke was already hurtling himself through the hall, carrying the folder in both hands. Felicity followed behind him. They rounded a corner and saw, a short distance away, Noah’s office. Its walls were glass, so Felicity could see Noah’s desk and computer and chairs, and no Noah. In front of his office, standing beside her desk like a guard to the inner sanctum, stood Ingrid.
