by Nancy Thayer
The sisters met her at the door. The oldest sibling, Irena, was restrained. The younger sister, Lena, bubbled with excitement.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” she said, taking both of Darcy’s hands. As she drew her into the living room, she continued, “Our family is so boring—all we talk about is real estate—and Boyz said you’re a librarian and I’m a huge reader! I’m a sophomore at Wellesley and I adore literature. But chemistry is my favorite subject, isn’t that weird?”
“Lena, let Darcy sit down,” Dita, the mother, said, laughing.
“All right, I will, but first I have to tell Darcy a secret.” Whispering in Darcy’s ear, she said, “Boyz said he thinks you’re the one!”
Darcy blushed and smiled and squeezed Lena’s hand. She didn’t dare look at Boyz.
Mr. Szweda rose from his chair by the fireplace and made a kind of half bow to her. “It’s nice to see you again, Darcy.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
She sat near Boyz—but not touching!—on the sofa.
“Would you like a cocktail?” Mrs. Szweda asked.
Darcy paused.
“Say no!” Lena told her. “Unless you like drinking pints of straight gin.”
Irena added kindly, “I’m drinking champagne.”
“Oh, champagne, please,” Darcy said, relieved.
The conversation at first was general chitchat about the weather, recent movies, and the Bijoux and other favorite restaurants in the area. At the dinner table, the Szwedas asked her about how she came to work at Bijoux. Darcy told them she was finishing a master’s degree in library science at Simmons and needed to work to pay her rent.
“Ah, a master’s degree in library science,” Mrs. Szweda said, shooting her husband a cryptic look.
When she said Nantucket was her home—she didn’t go into detail about her absent parents—both parents brightened.
“We’ve never been to Nantucket,” Mr. Szweda said. “I hear it’s trending now. Real estate is off-the-charts expensive.”
“Dearest,” Dita cooed, patting her husband’s hand, “it’s not always about the price of real estate.” Turning to Darcy she continued: “We haven’t gone there, because we’re always up at our house at Lake George in the summer. People can be such creatures of habit, can’t they?”
Chatty Lena chimed in, “Maybe Darcy would like to come up to Lake George this summer.”
Dita gently ignored her daughter. “So you want to be a librarian, Darcy. When did you decide on this career track?”
“I love books, and I love people,” Darcy answered simply. “I like bringing the two together.”
“Ah.” Dita clapped her hands lightly. “Now we have something in common. Makary and I, and really our entire family, love houses and people. We enjoy bringing houses and people together. That’s why our real estate business is flourishing.”
Elegant Irena spoke up. “A wall of books does give color and a sense of warmth to a room.”
“Yes,” Darcy agreed. “I suppose it does.”
“You should go with Boyz sometime when he lists a house,” Lena suggested. “He gets some of the most fabulous homes!”
Driving home, Darcy said wistfully, “Your family is so close, so devoted.”
Boyz sighed. “That’s true. Not always a good thing, you know.”
“Really? Why?”
He made a flicking motion with his hand, as if dismissing the subject. “I often feel that everything I do has to please my father.”
Darcy nodded. “I can understand that.”
“But tonight isn’t about my family,” Boyz said. He parked in front of Darcy’s apartment. Reaching over, he took Darcy’s hand. “It’s about you and me.”
Darcy’s feelings rocketed.
Boyz looked into her eyes. “Darcy, I knew the moment I saw you we would be good together.” He cleared his throat, as if it were difficult to speak. “I don’t mean to rush you or frighten you, but I think I’m in love with you. We haven’t known each other long, and yet somehow I feel I know you, and you know me.”
No man had ever spoken to Darcy that way before, with such candor, making himself vulnerable. This exotic, sophisticated man loved her? Believed she knew him? She flushed with pleasure. She felt glamorous and interesting and powerful. At last, she felt wanted.
They married that summer. It was an odd, lopsided wedding, with most of those in attendance members of the Szweda family. Darcy was grateful that Boyz’s family didn’t shriek in horror when they learned that neither of Darcy’s parents would attend. Darcy did invite them. They were both busy. Of course they were. For the entire month of July. Her best friends from Simmons had already moved to different states, leaving her roommate, Rachael, and the waitstaff of Bijoux to be present on Darcy’s side.
The sweet if slightly bizarre venue for the event was on the Cape, in the small chapel in the Sea View Community at the far end of the building. By then, Penny’s aging body had been so afflicted by the Lyme disease that she was taking several medications for the pain, and still having trouble doing the simplest tasks. But her mind was as sharp as ever, and she’d insisted on ordering the flowers for the chapel and the reception—white Casablanca lilies in masses everywhere.
Darcy wore a plain white ballerina-length dress and the family pearls, Penny’s wedding present. She wore a plain fingertip veil on her cap of brown hair. Everyone told her she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Two male friends from Bijoux escorted Penny, resplendent in turquoise chiffon and her grandmother’s diamond earrings, to the front row. Chase, Darcy’s favorite waiter, walked her down the aisle and gave her away. The retirement home minister performed the ceremony, with only the Szweda family and Boyz’s best friend, Tucker, on the groom’s side; a perfect and courteous balance to Darcy’s small showing. After they said “I do” and kissed, Darcy noticed a crowd of Sea View residents peering in the door. All of them were smiling. When the newlyweds adjourned to the small party room, they invited the other people in for cake and champagne.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Paris—of course. They strolled hand in hand through the Luxembourg Gardens, sighed with amazement in the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. They dined on a boat touring the Seine. They gasped at the Moulin Rouge. They toured Notre-Dame and shopped at Hermès and Le Bon Marché and Galeries Lafayette and brilliant boutiques tucked in along the Champs-Élysées. They ate and drank far too much and slept until noon every day. It was a dream honeymoon.
The honeymoon was the best part of the marriage.
Back in Boston, they lived in Boyz’s apartment on Commonwealth Avenue for almost three years, always too busy even to consider moving to a house. After the honeymoon, Darcy didn’t return to classes at Simmons, even though she would have finished her degree that semester.
“Don’t go to class,” Boyz had coaxed as they lay curled in bed in the morning. “Don’t leave me all alone. You’re my wife now, not some student.”
She could finish her degree later, Darcy had thought, and surrendered to her husband’s enticements.
He liked it when she did that.
Darcy did take a part-time job at the Boston Public Library to satisfy her book obsession. Boyz worked with his family, selling real estate. Most nights they ate takeout and collapsed in front of the television, but two or three nights a week they got dolled up and attended events where Boyz and his family could network. Charity events; galas for the ballet, the opera, the library, the hospital. Their lives were a whirlwind. Darcy was too busy to make any new friends or to see her old friends. She did visit her grandmother on the Cape every Sunday. Sometimes Boyz dutifully came with her; most often he did not.
At first, she liked the Szwedas’ lifestyle: riding in BMWs, staying at the Four Seasons when they went to New York for theater, drinking Veuve Clicquot. After a year, odd and unsettling thoughts began to seep into her mind. Dita and her daughters were always so accommodating, so willing to please Makary and Boyz. Mu
ch of their day—and Darcy’s day, too—was about shopping and grooming. Under Dita’s knowing eye, Darcy lived on lettuce and salmon, took spin and weight-lifting classes, and kept plenty of Grey Goose vodka on hand for the times when Boyz lost a sale to another Realtor. She glittered at Boyz’s side when he took prospective clients to dinner, smiling at the wives’ chatter, even when she disagreed with their political views. She ignored Boyz when he flirted with the trophy wives and smiled when male clients with cigar breath put their hands on her knees. She never talked about being a librarian; that was a sure conversation stopper.
Not all the clients were unpleasant. Many of them were delightful and fascinating, and Darcy knew it was an honor to dine with the man who’d won the Nobel Prize or the woman who’d won a Pulitzer. When they spent a summer month on Lake George, she realized she was fortunate to reside in a handsome mansion, swimming, sailing, playing tennis…and often, because she faked difficult “female problems,” remaining in her room, reading. She felt guilty because the cook had to bring her a tray—the family didn’t want to see Darcy when she wasn’t “up to it.” But for her, a life without reading was flat and meaningless, no matter how fabulous the environment around her.
As the days passed, Darcy decided she had never before known such an active family. When they went to Lake George for a vacation, they didn’t lie in a hammock in the shade. They went sailing or Jet Skiing or hiking or at the least swimming. If it rained, they didn’t curl up with a good book. They played tennis on their Wii. They had friends over for drinks or dinner—the family called it “networking.”
Darcy tried to connect with her husband’s family. She tried to admire them and please them. To be like them. She did grow fond of Lena, the youngest of the family, and the most cowed by her outspoken father. Often, she thought she was closer to Lena than to Boyz.
The turning point came the day Lena graduated from college. After the ceremony, Makary Szweda hosted a champagne celebration and dinner for Lena and her classmates in a private room at the posh restaurant Blue Ginger. Darcy had learned that her in-laws liked her to schmooze and cultivate prospective clients, so she behaved with as much charm as possible, and was rewarded by a guarded smile from Boyz’s father.
And then Lena clinked her spoon against her champagne flute. In her pale yellow party dress, she was radiant with happiness.
“Thank you all for coming!” she cried, opening her arms as if to gather them all against her. “And thank you, Father, for providing this celebration!” She paused, so everyone could clap for Mr. Szweda. Then she dropped the bomb. “And now I’m going to share some fabulous news—I’ve been admitted to the University of Chicago Medical School! I’m going to be a doctor!”
Everyone cheered and applauded…almost everyone.
Darcy took her husband’s hand. “Boyz, isn’t this wonderful? I had no idea Lena was”—she almost said so smart, but caught herself in time—“interested in med school.”
Boyz shook off her hand. Smiling through his teeth, he hissed, “Foolish girl. She knows that’s not the plan.”
“What do you mean, ‘the plan’?”
“You know very well what I mean by the plan. My father is building a dynasty. His children will inherit the business, and we will pass it on to our children.”
Darcy froze. She continued to smile, but behind her smile, her thoughts were racing. No, not racing. Screaming.
Dismal and embarrassed, she finally got it, why Boyz had chosen her—because she was pretty, yes, but mostly, because she was eager to please. She had no family bonds to compete with his. No need to divide or combine holidays, rules, obligations. Indeed, she’d been thrilled to become part of his family, a real true close-knit family who celebrated holidays together and vacationed together and were bound by a common desire: to be the best. At first, Darcy considered this kind of romantic, like a pioneer family harvesting potatoes and putting up jam to keep them all alive during the winter.
It was no longer a romantic dream, and Darcy knew that somehow she’d allowed herself to be drawn away from her first love—her first passion—books, reading, libraries. She vowed to herself that she would return to her first, real passion again. She was trying to be who she wasn’t, some glitter bug who would impress the Szwedas. She wanted to return to her true self.
Boyz was eager for a child—a son—the next generation in the dynasty. When they were first married, Darcy continued taking birth control pills because she intended to attend Simmons in the fall and finish her master’s degree. That didn’t happen, but after a year, she still took the pill, although she didn’t tell Boyz. She hardly admitted this to herself, she just popped a pill in her mouth after brushing her teeth and put the foil packet back in her Chanel makeup bag.
By their first anniversary, Irena was engaged to the least famous nephew of a very famous New England political family. The organization of the wedding—for this would be a grand society affair—was splashed all over the newspapers and even made Town and Country. It took up almost a year of the Szwedas’ lives. Boyz, spurred on to greater achievements in sales, spent more time working and less time in bed with Darcy, and for months at a time forgot he needed Darcy to get pregnant.
By their second anniversary, Darcy had second thoughts about the family she’d married into and about the person she was trying to become to please them. That fall, she returned to Simmons and finished her master’s degree in library science. After that, she wanted to take a full-time job at a library.
“No,” Boyz said when she told him her idea. “If you’re bored, if you want to be part of something like you’re always going on about, come work for the company. You’re smart, you could get your real estate license—”
“Boyz, I don’t want a real estate license. I’m a librarian. I want to work in a library.”
“Fine.” Boyz’s jaw tightened as it always did when he was angry. “Be a librarian then, but when you get pregnant, you have to stop working.”
“That’s a deal,” Darcy said.
When she was offered the full-time position as children’s librarian at the Arlington public library, she took it, even though it meant a long and often frustrating drive in heavy traffic every morning and night. It also meant she had to be at the library three nights a week until nine o’clock.
It also meant that one Thursday night, when a water pipe burst in the first-floor bathroom, they had to shut down the building immediately, so Darcy was free to go home early, and when she did—well, it was a cliché, really.
She unlocked the door of their apartment on Commonwealth Avenue.
She called out, “Hello! I’m home early! Have you eaten yet?”
Boyz wasn’t in the living room. Or their bedroom. But Darcy heard rustling noises, so she opened the door to their tiny guest bedroom and found Boyz there, in bed with a stunningly endowed redhead.
Darcy, well mannered to a fault, said, “Oh, excuse me.” She shut the door and went into the living room and looked out the window at the blazing lights of the city. She was aware of her emotions burning while her fingertips went numb. She felt so alone. She wished Penny were there to put her arms around Darcy and console her. Who could she talk to? Maybe Lena, but maybe not. Boyz was, after all, Lena’s brother, and Lena adored him. Darcy realized that for the almost three years of their marriage, her closest friends had been Boyz and his sisters. And she had been guarded around even them, always wanting to please, never saying anything that would get back to Boyz and his parents.
She wrapped her own arms around herself and held on tight, letting the shock waves hit her. Astonishment. Pain. Rage. Sorrow. The knowledge that she wasn’t enough for Boyz, she had never been enough, she’d never been right for him.
And he’d never been right for her.
Boyz came into the room, wearing a shirt held closed by one button. She heard him enter. She saw their reflections wavering in the window. He was tall and handsome and he had become for her a kind of jailer.
Now she
was free.
She turned to face her husband, whose hands were held out to the side, ready for his explanation, which would be, she knew, that she left him alone too often.
“Boyz,” she said bravely, “I want a divorce.”
Boyz said, “So do I.”
His words struck her like a slap across the face.
“Wow,” Darcy said. “I didn’t know you were so unhappy with our marriage.”
Boyz sighed heavily. “Darcy, look. Do me a favor. Go into the kitchen and shut the door so I can allow Autumn to leave without running into you.”
Darcy was stunned. “Autumn?”
“That’s her name. Go on. Then you and I can talk.”
Numbly, Darcy walked into the kitchen and shut the door.
Of course, she didn’t shut it all the way. She kept it open just enough to be able to catch a glimpse of Autumn.
The other woman was older than Darcy, with wavy auburn hair and a fabulous figure displayed to advantage in a tight emerald-green dress. Exactly what an Autumn should look like.
Boyz whispered to Autumn before she went out the door. In response, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him long and lovingly.
Darcy did an about-face in the kitchen, took out a water glass, and poured it full of wine.
Boyz called, “Come out now, Darcy. Sit down.” He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and buttoned his shirt and left the door to the bedroom open. Darcy sat on the sofa. Boyz took a chair across from her.
“You know I care for you, Darcy,” Boyz began. “I loved you when we married. I thought you were amazing—of course, you still are, but, let’s face it, we haven’t grown together in the past three years, we’ve grown apart.”
She didn’t respond. The protective detachment that had coated her only a few minutes ago was disappearing now, leaving her shaken and, oddly, ashamed, as if she had failed her husband; she hadn’t met his standards. Her legs began to tremble.
“You know how important it is to me to expand my contacts. I’m in a competitive business. And you—a librarian!—have been no help at all in my work. Instead of joining the right clubs, you sit around doing crossword puzzles! You read! You hide from me in your books.”
