Two messages waited. The first one: Tess. “Rachel. Rachel, pet, I hope your father is doing okay. But you’ve got to check in with me. You can’t just disappear. We’ve got submissions backing up here. I’m looking at a stack of head shots. I can’t possibly find the time to do this myself. Call me back.”
The second one was Tess also. She wandered into the kitchen as she listened to it. “Rachel,” said Tess. “I’m confused about why you won’t call me back.” Rachel put the phone down for a second and when she returned it to her ear the voice was still going. “Listen, we’ve got to talk about this film. If you’re not in touch with me soon I’m going to hand the project over to Stacy.” Stacy was four years younger than Rachel, officious, fussy, supremely organized. There was a rumor in the office that she had once delivered a box of homemade muffins to Tess’s apartment on a Sunday morning. “Do you hear me, Rachel? You’ve got to talk to me about your time frame here. I’m scheduling a producer session for the first of August. I need you here. Pet. I mean, I wish your father the best and all, but you have got to: Call. Me. Back.”
She listened to Tess’s message again. Then she turned her phone off, closed it, and put it into one of the bottom kitchen drawers, beneath a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream pint sleeve and a bunch of grill skewers. She was poking through the drawer to see what else was in there (a ginger grater, a collection of wooden salad spoons, one of those flat rubber things you use to open jars, and Olivia’s pink stuffed elephant) when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Her mind jumped instantly to a worst-case scenario—an intruder! a rapist!—and she was allowing herself to run down a list of horrors when Jane appeared in the kitchen. She was walking gingerly, bent over, like an old lady, her shoulders pulling together in front of her body, one hand on her stomach. She started when she saw Rachel, but she didn’t straighten, so the effect was not just of a deer caught in headlights but of an aging, crippled deer.
“Jane! What are you doing up?”
Jane lowered herself carefully into a chair and Rachel made an awkward motion toward her, as though to catch her. “Shhh,” Jane said. “You can’t tell anyone, Rachel. I didn’t think anyone was home. I just had to get up. I had to get out of that room.”
“But you’re not supposed to—”
“I know,” said Jane. “I know I’m not supposed to. But sometimes I do anyway. It keeps me sane, to see a little bit of the outside world.”
“Keeps you sane? You do this often? This isn’t your first time?” Rachel felt her mouth hang open like a cartoon character: big thick lips dragging toward the floor.
“When I can,” said Jane. “When everyone leaves at one time. Which isn’t often.”
“But what do you do?”
“Nothing much. Wander the house.” Jane looked sheepishly up at Rachel.
“Wander! You shouldn’t be wandering.”
“Sometimes,” said Jane, “I sit in your father’s recliner and look out at the garden. It’s a beautiful garden, and I can’t see it from my bed.” They both looked toward the window. It was a beautiful garden. It had come into full bloom, and every color was represented in exactly the right proportion.
“But the baby!”
“I know,” said Jane. “I know all about the baby. All I think about is the baby. Work, or the baby. The baby, or work. My placenta!”
Rachel pulled out the chair next to Jane’s and sat. Truly, she wasn’t exactly sure what a placenta was. Was she supposed to know that? “But you go to your appointments, right? You leave then.”
Jane sighed. “Yes. But that’s only every two weeks. And I feel so… so chaperoned during those.”
“Like at a school dance,” said Rachel, nodding. “In junior high.”
“Right,” said Jane. “Or like a prisoner. I mean, I know Stephen’s helping the best way he can, but if I breathe wrong or lean over too far to pick something up he flips out. He’s so nervous that it makes me feel nervous. Walking downstairs to look out at the garden feels much more reasonable all around.”
“The whole thing sounds terrible,” said Rachel. She looked at the mound underneath Jane’s robe. If things had gone in a different direction for her, she would have had a mound like that several months hence. She couldn’t imagine that, not really, a mound belonging to her and Marcus. Still, a seed of resentment sprouted somewhere deep inside her.
“It is terrible,” said Jane. “Temporary, but terrible. I mean, really the end could be in sight. If the bleeding stops, if the placenta moves away… well, this could turn out very normally in the end. I forget that sometimes.”
“Yeah?” Again with the placenta. (Moves away from what?) Rachel must have revealed some bewilderment in her expression, because Jane said, “I’m sorry, I’m probably boring the hell out of you. It’s just I think about the placenta all the time! I can’t help talking about it. It’s like I’m willing it to move.”
“Um,” said Rachel. “Pardon my ignorance. But move where?”
“Oh! I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t know anything about that. I didn’t, until I ended up here.” Jane smiled and motioned in the general area of her stomach. “Stop me if I’m giving you too many details.” She went on in a brisk, businesslike manner. Rachel could imagine her at some high-level business meeting, explaining complex financial topics to a roomful of people in suits. “The placenta is the thing—it’s an organ, actually—that nourishes the fetus as it’s growing. It’s supposed to move toward the top of the womb as the baby grows. But sometimes it doesn’t; mine didn’t. Mine’s lying too close to the cervix.” Rachel noticed that when Jane really got going she used her hands a lot. The word cervix seemed a little too personal and intimate, but Rachel continued to listen. “So. That’s why I started bleeding. And if I move around too much, I might start bleeding again. It’s called placenta previa. I’m lucky, because in my case the placenta is only partially covering the cervix, and there’s a decent-sized chance it will move away before it’s time to deliver. But on the other hand, most people with partial previa don’t have much bleeding. So mine’s—how’d the doctor put it?—mine’s a dramatic case.”
“Lucky you,” said Rachel.
“I know. I never was one for drama, so it’s ironic.” She looked at Rachel. “But I’m boring you! I’m sorry. See what I’ve become? God! I don’t even recognize myself.”
“You’re not boring me at all.” Rachel studied Jane. She hadn’t really thought much about why her sister-in-law was up in that bedroom; wrapped up in her own troubles, she had sort of forgotten that there was a whole story there. Understand the backstory, Tess always told her. Even if you’re casting the smallest part in a tiny production you don’t think anyone will ever see, understand the backstory. That’s what makes a casting agent better than good. And Rachel had lost sight of the backstory.
“It’s terrifying, how many things can go wrong in a pregnancy,” said Jane. “When you really think about it, the amazing thing is that any babies are born normally.”
Rachel pushed the seed of resentment down, down, until it all but disappeared. It wasn’t Jane’s fault Rachel had once been pregnant and now was not. It wasn’t Tess’s fault either. And here was a chance to forge a connection with Jane, a connection that went beyond pregnancies. Why not seize it?
“Do you think it’s possible,” Rachel asked carefully, “to mess up at your job and then make things right again? Or once you mess up, once you really mess up, is it all over?”
Jane looked at Rachel. She pushed a piece of hair out of her face. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Rachel. “I was just thinking about a work situation. That I find myself in.”
Jane leaned toward her. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Rachel thought about that. “No. Not really, I don’t think so. I’m just wondering if—well, I guess what I’m wondering is this. Would I already know by now if I was going to be good at what I do? Would I already be a star?”
“Well,” said Jane slo
wly. “I think there’s always room for a fresh start.”
“You do?”
“At least I hope so.”
“You!” said Rachel. “Why do you hope that? You already are a star. A rock star.”
“Noooo,” said Jane. “No, no. I just work hard. That’s it. I just work really hard, harder than anyone else in the room. But that doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes.”
“But you make so much money,” said Rachel. She lowered her voice as though the very appliances were listening. “Right? I mean you do, right?”
“Sure, I guess,” said Jane. “I mean, yes. I make a lot of money. In a good year, there are bonuses. Yes, I make a lot of money.”
“If I made the kind of money you must make—God, I don’t think I’d have any problems at all,” said Rachel. “I would feel like I had arrived.”
Jane laughed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because it’s funny that anyone would think that.”
“Why funny?” Rachel felt a little embarrassed, so she rose from the table and made herself busy in the kitchen. She found a package of paper napkins and refilled the empty dispenser. She sprayed cleaner on the refrigerator doors and wiped them down—everywhere on them, it seemed, was evidence of Olivia’s fingerprints. Jane watched her.
Finally she said, “It’s funny because there is no point to get to, no amount of money that makes you say, There, I’m done. There is no arriving. There’s just doing. And doing, and doing.”
Rachel considered this. She sat back down at the table and faced Jane squarely. “No arriving,” she said. “That’s depressing. So you can’t arrive. But I guess… I guess you can depart. You can disappear?”
“Yes,” said Jane. “By all means, I think you can disappear.”
They were silent for a moment. Rachel considered the garden again.
“Jane? Can I touch your stomach?”
Jane looked startled.
“I’m sorry,” said Rachel. “Is that too personal a request? Is that weird?”
“Not at all,” said Jane, turning in her chair so that her stomach was within Rachel’s reach. “It’s just that—”
“What? I don’t have to. I really don’t have to.”
“No! Do. Do. It’s just funny to me that I’ve been living here for weeks, and with the exception of Stephen you’re the first person who’s asked me that.”
Rachel wasn’t sure she’d ever touched a stomach in such a late stage of pregnancy. She hadn’t seen Lillian right before the children were born, and her friends in New York did not yet have children. She placed her hand on the swell. She saw now why strangers wanted to do this, why they were drawn to it, to the pulse of life underneath that surface. Jane’s stomach was harder than Rachel expected it to be, and more unforgiving.
“It’s okay,” said Jane. “Really, you can press harder. It’s not made of glass.”
“God,” said Rachel. “I thought it would be softer. I didn’t realize. How protected that baby is in there. So insulated! I’m jealous, in a way. You know what I mean?”
“I do,” said Jane, and she placed her hand on top of Rachel’s. “I really, really do.”
Lillian set the car seat heavily on the kitchen counter.
“Oh, Lilly,” said Ginny. “Not there. It could topple over, for God’s sake! And I’m using this space.” She was making a blueberry pie; she and Olivia had gone together to Charlotte to pick the berries the day before. Olivia was watching The Little Mermaid on the television in the den.
“Sorry,” said Lillian. “I’ll put him on the ground, then.”
“Why are you putting him anywhere?”
“Because I’m going to lunch with Heather. She got a sitter.”
Ginny flipped rapidly through the pages of her old recipe book. “Let’s see… one and a quarter cups of sugar.” She stopped and looked up at Lillian. “And I suppose you got a sitter too?”
Lillian smiled at the counter. She put her finger on a sticky spot left from breakfast. Then she met Ginny’s gaze squarely. “No…”
“But I’m here.”
“But you’re here. And I thought, well, you don’t mind, do you?”
“I’m here,” said Ginny. “And I wouldn’t mind. But I am making a pie. With a crust from scratch.”
“Philip will just sit here and watch.” And then, to the car seat, “Won’t you, prince?”
“And what if he needs to be held?” demanded Ginny. “And I’ve got blueberry all over my hands?”
“He won’t,” said Lillian, squinting to see the digital clock on the microwave. “He’s practically asleep. Look at his eyelids!”
They both looked. “See?” said Lillian. “He’ll be out before I’m down the driveway.” Philip opened his mouth and let out a small unhappy sound.
Ginny sighed.
“Rachel’s around, right?” asked Lillian. “I can ask her to keep an eye.”
“Don’t,” said Ginny. “Don’t ask Rachel. She’s resting in my room.”
“Resting? What does she have to rest from?”
Ginny said nothing.
“Oh, honey,” Lillian said to the baby, leaning into the car seat and distributing little kisses all over his face. “Isn’t it awful? Nobody loves you.”
“Nonsense,” said Ginny. “Leave him, then.”
“Really?” Lillian smiled. “Really, you don’t mind? It’s just lunch. I’ll be back in an hour—”
“One hour, to pick up Heather, eat, and get back here?”
“Give or take.” Lillian jingled her car keys and leaned into the den. “But if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.” Ginny searched Lillian’s face carefully for signs of sarcasm or malice, but she found none. It was lovely, after all, to see her looking so happy. It was lovely to see her smile.
“Go,” she said. “Really, go. Have a good time. I mean it.”
“Bye, sweetie,” Lillian said to Olivia, who had her thumb in her mouth and did not look away from the television screen. To Ginny she said, “He’ll sleep the whole time, I’m sure of it.” She leaned into Ginny and hugged her, and Ginny had to work at not holding onto her too long, because after all it was delicious to have her daughter, however briefly, in her grasp.
“I don’t have an opinion at all,” announced Ginny at her book club meeting the following week. “I could barely concentrate on it. My house is completely full. I can hardly complete a thought, never mind a book.”
“I’m sorry,” said Myrna kindly. “But I can’t sympathize with you at all.”
“No?”
“No. I beg my children to bring the grandkids, but all I get is excuses. Buffalo’s so far, they say. Or they have swimming lessons. Or this and that. I’d give anything for a full house—” She picked up the book and put it back down again.
They were meeting at Myrna’s house in South Burlington. It was magnificent new construction with stunning views of the lake. She had moved into it two years ago, six months before Myrna’s husband, Hank, went to the gym to use the elliptical machine, suffered a heart attack, and never came home. Now Myrna had three bedrooms and a hot tub on the deck all to herself.
“And you, a widow,” said Hedy. “They should be here all the time, looking after you.”
“I don’t need looking after,” said Myrna. “I do very well looking after myself, thank you very much. But the company I could use.” She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a cheese-and-cracker platter as big as a bicycle wheel. “The companionship would be nice,” she added. “I’m not saying all the time. But occasionally.”
“It’s the daughter-in-law,” said Alice. “It’s always the daughter-in-law.”
“I don’t know—” said Myrna, spreading cocktail napkins in the shape of a fan on the table.
“Well,” said Hedy. “My grandchildren live around the corner, and believe me, there are times when Buffalo doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.”
“Hedy,” said Alice. “What a thing to say.”
She uncorked a bottle of white wine and tipped it toward Ginny, who pushed her glass closer.
“Not if you heard the noise,” said Hedy. “My God, but they’re loud!”
“That’s because they’re boys,” said Myrna. “My little grandbabies are perfect angels.”
Hedy snorted.
“What? They are.”
“That’s the distance talking,” said Hedy. She adjusted her skirt across her lap and reached for a cracker. “And it’s not just the noise. It’s something more.”
“What?” said Ginny eagerly.
“It’s my daughter! It’s the way she assumes that I’m available for babysitting. It’s ‘I have a doctor’s appointment, I’m just going to drop them off.’ Or ‘Just a quick hair color, can you come over for an hour?’ ”
“Did we do that?” asked Alice. She poured wine for Myrna and Hedy. “To our parents?”
“We didn’t,” said Myrna. “I didn’t. We grew up faster. We were on our own sooner. College, married, babies, boom. We didn’t have time to get dependent on anyone. We were right in the thick of it, still babies ourselves.”
“My parents wouldn’t have taken it,” said Hedy. “They would have had me married off at sixteen if they could have.”
“It was a different world back then,” said Ginny. “Don’t you think? All this hemming and hawing over what everyone should do with their lives. We didn’t do all that, right? We just lived.”
“I’m with Ginny,” said Alice. “They overthink things, these kids. They want everything to be perfect, so they spend all this time figuring things out—”
“When really,” said Hedy, “it’ll never be perfect. It will just be life.” She drained her glass and reached for the bottle. “Messy.”
From a faraway room a telephone rang and Myrna waved her hand dismissively. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Telemarketer.”
The Arrivals: A Novel Page 17
