“Is it the money?”
“No,” said Rachel shortly.
“My treat,” said Whitney.
“No,” said Rachel. “I feel like diner food, is all.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Whitney. “Nobody feels like diner food when there’s better food to be had.”
“No,” said Rachel again, without conviction.
Then she allowed herself to be taken to the restaurant, and allowed herself to order a crab cake appetizer, and an entrée of sea scallops with crisp pancetta and lemon crème fraîche.
“Is that all?” said the waitress. She had flawless, milky skin and a fabulously short haircut; Rachel saw her playing Dunyasha or some other Chekhovian heroine. Or perhaps her skin was too perfect for the stage; perhaps all that creaminess would be wasted so far from the audience. Perhaps it was the movies where her future lay.
“That’s all,” said Rachel.
“No!” said Whitney. “And two glasses of—” She paused, looking at the wine list. “The Pouilly-Fuissé,” she said.
“Whit—”
The wine was fourteen dollars a glass.
“My treat,” Whitney said firmly. She closed the menu and handed it to the waitress and took Rachel’s from her and did the same. She looked exhilarated and satisfied, the way Rachel’s brother, Stephen, used to look after he’d completed a cross-country race in which he’d done well.
“Thank you,” said Rachel. “I appreciate it, I really do. But you really don’t have to.”
“Of course I don’t,” said Whitney. “But I can, so why wouldn’t I?” Rachel pondered this. For all of her protests, why shouldn’t Whitney be permitted to treat? Not only had she come from a family with more money than Rachel’s, but the family she was marrying into was hardly a disappointment in the financial area. Rob’s great-great-grandfather was said to have been instrumental in the development of the flow-through tea bag. There were millions there, somewhere, and at some point a significant part of that would be Whitney’s. Rachel, thinking about this, looking hard past Whitney, at the feet and calves of the people moving by on the sidewalk, tried very hard not to hate her best friend. She said, “I shouldn’t have a drink before going back to work. I’m in the middle of casting a commercial.”
“Oh, phooey,” said Whitney.”
“Right,” said Rachel, with some effort. “Phooey.”
“Pretend it’s nineteen sixty,” said Whitney. She leaned conspiratorially toward Rachel over the table. “I’ve been watching Mad Men on DVD while Rob is at the hospital. All of Madison Avenue was drunk back then! It was a hoot. It’s a wonder anyone got anything done. Drinking and sex. That’s all they did.”
“In the office?”
“Sometimes! It’s not like that anymore, I can tell you that much.” Whitney worked for a large advertising agency in midtown; she had been climbing its ranks steadily since they had graduated from college. Recently she had been put in charge of a small but very successful advertising campaign for an energy drink.
When the fourteen-dollar wines arrived, in glasses big enough to comfortably house a goldfish, Rachel took a sip and felt better.
“Good,” said Whitney authoritatively.
“Yes,” said Rachel without the same conviction. When had it happened, that she’d taken to deferring to Whitney in matters of food and drink? She remembered a time, not so very long ago, in college, when she and Whitney had been more or less on equal footing—when Whitney, whatever money her parents had, had wordlessly agreed to live by Rachel’s financial constraints. When dollar drafts at a bar in the East Village were the extent of their treats to themselves. And Rachel didn’t think about it much then, but the truth came to her now, as hard and cold as a bullet. Whitney had been slumming it back then. Pretending. While Rachel was just living.
Whitney’s cell phone rang again and she picked it up, looked at it, put it back down, and said, “Just Rob.”
“Get it,” said Rachel. “You might not get another chance to talk to him today.” Rob was completing his residency in orthopedics at Columbia Presbyterian; he worked agonizingly long shifts.
“No,” said Whitney. “I talk to him all the time. This is more important. I never see you anymore.” She leaned over the table and said, “So how are you?” The question, and the concern and munificence that accompanied it, appeared to be genuine, and Rachel, who felt suddenly as though she might cry, took another sip of wine.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Not great,” she conceded. “Not by a long shot. But okay.”
Whitney nodded. “And work is?” The waitress appeared with their appetizers, and Rachel and Whitney leaned back from each other to allow room for the giant white plates to be set down before them.
“Work is… work is okay. I mean, screamingly boring right now. I’m casting for a tampon commercial.”
Whitney giggled. “Rachel! That’s hilarious.”
Rachel permitted herself a wan smile. “I suppose it is. But it’s not, as they say, what I came to do.”
“But it’s okay? It’s manageable?”
“Yeah. It’s manageable. I’ve got bigger stuff coming up in the next couple of months, if I can keep my head on straight. An independent film.”
“Rachel! Really? That’s fantastic.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“So… oh, it’s Marcus. That’s what isn’t okay.”
“Right.”
“Oh, Rach.” Whitney shook her head sadly. It was the way, Rachel thought, that her mother had shaken her head at her when she was young and had done something careless, something about which she ought to have known better, and had disappointed her.
Rachel took a bite of crab cake.
“Phenomenal, aren’t they?” said Whitney eagerly. “I had them last time. I came with Rob and his parents, for brunch. Right after we got engaged.”
Rachel nodded, and chewed. It was phenomenal, the crab cake, and the sensation that had come upon her, of being well cared for, and of being plied with expensive food she could not afford to buy for herself, and of being looked at with such love and caring by someone whom she had known so intimately that they’d once spent the whole of a six-hour car ride from New York to Vermont not even turning on the radio because they’d had so much to talk about—this sensation was enough suddenly to allow her guard to come sufficiently down so that she said to Whitney, “I slept with Marcus.”
“Stephen,” said Jane. “Don’t get in an accident.”
“I’m not. I won’t.” He gripped the wheel. If you had asked him earlier in the day how far the hospital was from Church Street he would have said, Oh, not far, you could walk there if you wanted to, wouldn’t take you long. But now, faced with the task of navigating his car through summer traffic, of remembering exactly where to turn so as not to get caught on a one-way street, it felt like miles and miles. It felt like he was driving to another state.
“Main Street?” he said out loud. “Or Colchester Avenue? Shit, they redid all this since I’ve been here—”
He glanced at Jane. Her face was white. Both hands pressed into her stomach as if by holding on she could keep the baby safe. She looked straight ahead; it seemed to him that she had not even blinked since they got in the car. “Just pick one,” she said. “Find it. Stop and ask if you have to.”
“No, I don’t have to—see? There’s the sign for emergency. We’re going the right way. The blue sign, right there?”
Jane said nothing.
“Can you feel it?” he asked. “Is it still moving?”
She nodded. He had never seen a look exactly like this one on her face. He had seen fear, of course, but always in combination with something else: fear and impatience, fear and resolve, fear and uncertainty. But this: unadulterated terror. He had never seen it. It frightened him.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You know that. It’s going to be okay.”
“Stephen,” she said. “Stop saying that. You don
’t know if it’s true.”
“Of course I do,” he said. But his own voice betrayed him, the falsehood lying just below the surface of the words.
Ahead of him a black SUV stalled at a green light. “Jesus Christ, come on,” he said, hitting the wheel with his fist. “Come on.” And at last the SUV spurted forward and so eager was he to follow it that he nearly hit its rear end.
And here it was, finally! The stout red letters against the white building: EMERGENCY. If ever I’ve experienced an emergency, he thought, this is it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said again, pulling over. This time Jane didn’t answer because she had already unfastened her seat belt and was on her way out of the car.
“Oh, Rachel,” said Whitney. “You didn’t. When?”
“I did. A month ago. He came by to have me sign this banking thing, and, well, it just happened.”
“Rachel!”
“I know,” said Rachel. “It’s terrible, and stupid. And even so, I can’t help thinking—”
“What?”
“I can’t help thinking… I know it sounds idiotic, and like such a cliché, but I can’t help thinking that Marcus was the one. And I let him get away. And now he’s gone.”
Whitney put down her fork, then took a great big drink of her wine. She regarded Rachel over the glass, and when she put it down she reached across the table, with the hand that wore the massive, taunting engagement ring, and said, soberly, “Oh, sweetie.”
“What?”
“Of course he wasn’t the one.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if he was, he wouldn’t have gone away.”
Rachel sighed. She wondered if it was possible to hate a best friend and love her to pieces at the exact same time.
“But.”
Whitney stabbed at a piece of radicchio. “But what?”
“What if it’s not that simple?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, love. Commitment. All of it. What’s if not so simple as you say it is? What if the right one can walk away? And the wrong one can stay?”
“It is, though. It is that simple,” said Whitney fiercely. She took a piece of bread from the basket on the table and buttered it with energy and conviction.
“But… don’t you think that maybe that’s easy for you to say, in your position?”
Whitney wiped her mouth and put her hand to her forehead, in a gesture that reminded Rachel of women in centuries-old paintings. Whitney had lately begun wearing her hair differently, in the sort of cut that you had to keep up with every six weeks or it would all go to hell, but that, when kept up properly, and styled correctly, the way Whitney’s was, looked outrageously good. “Because it has to be that simple,” she said. “I won’t accept it any other way.”
Rachel felt an unwelcome pinch of envy. Then, catching sight of herself in the mirror behind Whitney, she wondered if she was getting too old to wear her hair long and straight. It had always been one of her greatest sources of pride, her hair, and the one thing about her physical appearance that was an indisputable positive. Marcus had loved it, and had told her so, nearly every day they were together, and she had promised, one night in bed, one of those nights when she would have promised anything at all, never to cut it. But perhaps the world would take her more seriously if she had shorter hair.
“Listen,” said Whitney. “I only know my own situation.”
“But your own situation is… pretty good.” The waitress appeared and swept away their plates gracefully, as if she were performing in a ballet.
“I suppose it is,” said Whitney modestly. She smiled.
The waitress deposited their entrées in front of them and said, in a voice that somehow exhibited ennui and sophistication all at once, “Anything else?”
“No, thank you,” said Whitney, and then she looked down and said softly to her plate, “I don’t know as much as you think I do, Rach. Don’t listen to me, not if what I’m saying is making you upset.”
“But.” Rachel felt a bit desperate. “You have to know more! Look where you are. And look where I am.”
“I don’t, though,” said Whitney. “I don’t know anything. I mean, Rob and I, we can’t even—”
“Can’t even what?” said Rachel, a bit more eagerly than she would have liked.
“We can’t even choose a wineglass without getting into a fight.”
“Really?” Rachel stopped cutting her scallops—there were only three of them, but they were nearly as big as a baby’s head—and looked inquiringly (hopefully) at Whitney.
“Well, it’s not quite that bad. But this wedding—and his mother—and my mother.” She paused and took another sip of wine. “Good Lord, this is going to my head.” There was a little spot of color on each of Whitney’s cheeks.
Rachel felt a sudden affection for Whitney, and for the restaurant, and for Manhattan itself, going about all of its weekday business outside the windows. “It all sounds like a bit much,” she said kindly.
“It is!” said Whitney. “You can’t imagine.”
“I know,” said Rachel. “I really can’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t.”
“And I feel like an idiot complaining about it, because really there’s nothing to complain about. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
“It’s probably the wine,” said Rachel.
“I think you’re right,” agreed Whitney, draining her glass. “It’s the wine. But, God, can you believe how stressed out I let myself get? About wineglasses?” She giggled, and Rachel giggled too, and they ate the rest of the meal in that companionable, silent way that only friends who have known each other for a very long time can do.
When they had finished and Whitney had settled the bill, Rachel was nearly late getting back to the auditions. She would have to spend the money on a taxi after all.
In the lobby of the Mercer Hotel, Whitney hugged Rachel and said, into her hair, “Thanks, sweetie.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“You listened. And you came with me. I’m so glad to get those stupid glasses taken care of. Finally.” Whitney squeezed Rachel’s arm an extra time and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Rachel watched her arm go up to hail a cab.
She stood for a minute in the lobby of the hotel, which was full of sleek, stylish people moving quickly. Where could they all be going? And what was the rush?
She checked her cell phone; no messages. She checked her office voice mail too—nothing there either. Then she examined the contents of her wallet. She had just enough cash for cab fare back to work.
As she made her way through a throng of people in the doorway, she could feel the momentary good cheer provided by the wine begin to dissolve. It had been hours since she’d called her father, and no call back. This was unusual, and suddenly irritating, even infuriating, for how was he to know that her crisis was merely financial? What if she had been calling him from jail, or from the bottom of a ditch somewhere?
She opened her phone and scrolled through her contact list, looking for her sister Lillian’s name.
Lillian might understand. Lillian had once been twenty-nine, childless, unmarried, perhaps unmoored, though Rachel, so many years younger, had certainly been too caught up in her own life to notice what was going on with Lillian. Still, Lillian, before acquiring the marriage and the house and the beautiful children (well, calling the new baby beautiful, that was rather generous, but perhaps with time his looks would improve), had possibly at one time felt the way Rachel felt now. And perhaps she could dispense some advice to her younger sister.
Depending on when you caught her, Lillian could either provide a sympathetic ear or be a complete grouch, and you had no idea, until you’d tried, which Lillian you were going to get. But the benefits of the sympathetic Lillian far outweighed the risks of the grouchy one, so, once she had successfully hailed a cab and given the driver the address of her office, she pres
sed the call button. Lillian was sure to be at home at nearly two o’clock in the afternoon, when Olivia was napping.
Perhaps Lillian, if she were feeling particularly generous, could see her way clear to lending Rachel a bit of money to get her through until the next paycheck. Perhaps at the very least she would have some words of wisdom, something that would allow Rachel to feel that the hill she had ahead of her to climb was not so impossibly tall after all.
“Just do it,” said Stephen. He gripped Jane’s hand tightly. It seemed suddenly smaller and whiter than it had earlier in the day; it looked and felt like a child’s hand. He held Jane’s cell phone out to her. He had found the number in the phone’s contact list, had scrolled down to it, had done everything but pressed the green button to send the call.
Jane looked steadily at the ceiling, which was white—not surprising in a hospital, of course, but Stephen couldn’t help wishing that Jane had something more exotic to look at, something less predictable and mundane. A jungle scene, perhaps, or an ocean motif. She had been looking at the ceiling for a long while, ever since the doctor and nurses had cleared out of the room.
“Call her,” said Stephen. “She’s your mother. She’s going to want to know. She’s got a right to know what’s going on with you.”
“Oh, rights,” said Jane dismissively. She closed her eyes.
“Come on, Janey, or I’ll call her myself.”
“She’ll be in a session, I’m sure of it. She’s back-to-back on Mondays.”
“Then you leave a message.”
“I can’t leave that on a message—‘Hello, Mother, here in the hospital, almost lost the baby.’ ” She put her hands on her stomach. “I’ll call her later, I promise. Move the phone, okay?” Shakily, he put the phone back in her bag.
He was still terrified. He couldn’t forgive himself for the conviction he’d felt. He’d been certain that they’d lost the baby, and somehow, unbidden, his mind had leaped ahead, had jumped from where they were now to the question of what to do next, how to console Jane, how long it would be until they could try again.
But they hadn’t lost the baby. “It’s going to be all right,” Stephen said now. “You know it is. Right? You know it? Because it is.” He had seen the blood on the seat of the car when Jane got up. Maternal bleeding, the nurse had told him. Bright red blood like that: maternal bleeding. He didn’t like the sound of that.
The Arrivals: A Novel Page 9
