by Meg Donohue
It’s not the first time that it occurs to Dani that her memory until her early twenties was like a steel trap; since then, it has become catch-and-release. Something important, she feels, is slipping away from her, and she worries that it is her life.
She knows she should go straight back to her apartment and write. She is nearing the climax of her novel—a story about a group of childhood friends at the beach, the death of a charming but reckless twenty-one-year-old boy, and a narrator plagued by secrets. The scenes that she has yet to write are the ones that she cannot seem to get right; they send her back to the beginning; they are the reason she has been writing and rewriting this novel for nearly eight years.
Isn’t she allowed one day of leniency after being fired? On her birthday? It’s not like she would get any real writing done when she’s this hungover. She’ll start checking Craigslist for a new job first thing in the morning. Her friend Layla waitresses at a cocktail lounge in Western Addition and has already promised her a free birthday beer. She’ll probably treat her to two when she hears about the day Dani has had.
Dani walks to the bus stop on the corner. Later, she’ll take a bath, and the sound of the ice cubes rattling around in the glass of bourbon in her hand will provide as much comfort as the skin-hugging warmth of the water. Now she pulls out the novel she took from the store and opens it. When her bus arrives fifteen minutes later, she looks up and then down again at the dog-eared page, vaguely aware that she hasn’t read a word.
4
Kate
“Delivery,” Lisa says, entering Kate’s office. Her usually cheerful assistant doesn’t look at Kate as she sets the box on her desk. “I opened it. Sorry,” she mumbles and turns quickly to leave. She shuts the door behind her.
Kate eyes the box warily. It’s ten o’clock and the sun is already too bright in her small fifteenth-floor office. Even though it has been seven years since college, since she’s known anything else, it still feels unnatural to be in an office on a beautiful summer day. The air conditioner is cranked so high that she shivers in her short-sleeved silk blouse. The combination of dazzling sun and frigid forced air makes her feel off-kilter, as if she were coming down with the flu. Or maybe, she thinks—remembering but not really remembering, exactly, because it’s not like she’s forgotten for even one second—it’s the baby making her feel this way. How did this happen? she asks herself for the one-millionth time. She finds she cannot think about the baby too much, or the room starts to dim; for the first time in years, she cannot envision her future.
She stands and lowers the shade another few inches before lifting one of the cardboard box flaps. Inside, beneath several sheets of silver tissue paper, a shiny white box holds two neat stacks of wedding invitations.
Kate sinks down into her desk chair so heavily that it rolls backward and knocks the wall. She feels terrified and humiliated and lonely, and she needs to tell someone. Her emotions are like trees falling in a forest—she can’t be entirely sure she is feeling what she thinks she is feeling unless someone else hears. She shuffles herself back toward the desk, picks up the phone, and dials.
“Hi,” Vanessa says, breathing heavily. Kate hears voices in the background.
“Hey. What are you doing?”
“Walking with Lucy on the High Line. Drew and I are going to Estelle’s eighty-fifth birthday party next month and I’m determined to fit into this Michael Kors dress I bought before Lucy was born.”
“Oh.” Without fail, Kate forgets to adequately prepare herself for these conversations with Vanessa. She picks up the phone thinking she will reach Vanessa Dale, and within moments realizes that she is talking to Vanessa Dale Warren, the grown-up version of her best friend. Kate had known that Drew Warren, with his good looks and high-profile friends, was perfect for Vanessa when she first met him. She’d also known that her friendship with Vanessa would change when she married him, and she didn’t begrudge Vanessa this—at least, not much. You were supposed to lose yourself in love. Marriage was supposed to be an impenetrable partnership. Naturally your old friendships would change.
“What’s going on?” Vanessa asks, huffing and puffing. During puberty, Vanessa’s body had done one of those insane, seemingly overnight metamorphoses from pudgy to curvy, eventually leaving her with the sort of enviable figure that prompted people to describe her as All Woman. Since having Lucy, her body has softened again, as if returning to its natural state. Kate thinks this plumpness makes her even more beautiful (and more approachable too, a trait Kate feels society underrates), but the extra pounds clearly bother her friend.
“Well, I’m officially pathetic,” Kate says. “The wedding invitations just arrived and my assistant ran out of my office like they were emitting toxic gas. And she shut the door behind her! Which begs the question: Does she think heartbreak is contagious? Or is it just that she’s worried I’m going to cause a scene and she wants to save me from myself?”
Vanessa’s breathing quiets as though she is finally slowing down. Maybe she is running her hand down the length of her shiny ponytail. It heartens Kate to picture her friend making this old, familiar gesture.
“Oh, Kate,” Vanessa says. “You’re not pathetic. Don’t say that.”
“Well, if I don’t say it to you, who am I going to say it to?” She doesn’t know why she sounds angry. None of this is Vanessa’s fault. She puts her hand on her stomach, which is as flat as ever. Her doctor confirmed that she is about six weeks along. Kate hasn’t shared this news with anyone—not Peter, not her parents, not her friends. If she tells someone, the situation will harden into unavoidable reality. She’s not quite ready for this.
“At least you didn’t send out the invitations,” Vanessa says.
“No, but the Save-the-Date cards went out months ago. My parents have started calling everyone to let them know. My dad thinks he can get the Union League to refund our deposit, so there’s that. Even the Union League thinks I’m pathetic.”
“Stop it.”
“Know anyone who wants to buy a wedding dress?”
Vanessa laughs and then abruptly falls quiet.
“It’s okay,” Kate says. “You can laugh. Humor is allowed.”
“Have you spoken to Peter?”
“Yeah.” In the eight days since he had broken up with her, Peter had called twice. Each time they spoke, Kate waited for him to admit he had made a huge mistake; each time, she hung up feeling disappointed and heartbroken and foolish all over again. “He just says the same things. He’s not changing his mind.”
“Do you want him to?” Vanessa asks, surprised. Kate knows what Vanessa wants her to say. Vanessa, with her long black eyelashes and olive-specked eyes and perfect cheekbones, has never been dumped. Her life is a glittering thing: full of love and baby kisses and the magic of New York City.
“Yes,” Kate says matter-of-factly. Even though she and Peter had not shared a home, even though they had not been one of those couples that did everything together, they had built a life together. The thought of him moving on and eventually marrying someone else makes her want to vomit. And now, of course, there is the baby. Their baby. “I’d take him back if he changed his mind.”
“You just need more time. It’s all so new.” Kate tries to forgive the distance in Vanessa’s voice, reminding herself that Vanessa is distant—she’s in an entirely different city. “But really,” Vanessa continues, “it’s better for everyone that he figured this all out now. Before you got married. Before you had kids.”
Kate is silent. There was a time when she would not have been able to contain herself and would have now told Vanessa she is pregnant, a time when Vanessa would have questioned Kate’s uncharacteristic quiet, a time when Kate might have spent more time analyzing Vanessa’s tone. But that time is long gone. Now they are close but not that close. Kate tells herself this is because they’re adults, that all women stop spilling out their every secret to one another once they’re out of college, that years of e-mails and texts have ma
de it harder for them to really hear each other when they actually speak. But none of this adds up to the whole truth about the space between them.
Even in a normal year—a year when she wasn’t pregnant, a year when her fiancé hadn’t dumped her—Kate would have been out of sorts right now. It’s June, which means the anniversary of Colin’s death is approaching. When she was younger, she looked forward to the summer in every other season, but now it is a dark spot in her year, a time she endures with gritted teeth and long runs with Gracie. This is why she had set her wedding date for September—she’d thought it would help her get through the summer, the eighth anniversary of her brother’s death, if she had a dangling carrot on which to set her sights. She realizes now that her spike of anxiety as summer approached might be one of the reasons Peter broke up with her when he did.
They’d had a humiliating fight in front of Father Jerry during one of their Pre-Cana meetings four weeks earlier. All Kate had done was set a printout of the detailed plan she had made for their future on the table. Kids, career milestones, bucket list items like visiting her ancestors’ castle in Ireland and hiking the Grand Canyon—it was all there, year by year. Peter, not realizing she was serious, had laughed; when he saw she was not kidding, he had sat back on the couch, his mouth hanging open.
“I just don’t want any surprises,” Kate had said. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”
After Colin’s death Kate had begun to have panic attacks. She would feel them building steam for days, spinning black tornadoes in her chest that sucked the oxygen from her lungs. The only thing that allowed her to catch her breath again was planning, focusing steely-eyed on something other than the past or even the present. She certainly wasn’t going to start taking antianxiety medication—not after what happened to Colin. She directed her laser focus on studying for the LSAT, then her law school classes and law review, then her job search, her billable hours, and, this past year, planning her wedding. Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been, her father, quoting Wayne Gretzky, had once told her, and it’s the best advice she’s ever heard. Peter used to like how organized she is; they used to compare their daily planners and debate who had neater handwriting. She had told him about the panic attacks that had begun after Colin died, but she had left out part of the story, the part she had never told anyone. Still, she thought he understood.
“You don’t want any surprises?” Peter asked. The look on his face told her that he either thought she was insane or he pitied her. It might have been both.
“Any bad surprises. You know what I mean, Peter.”
Peter swung his gaze to Father Jerry. “She doesn’t understand how controlling she is,” he said. “I keep telling her to ease up but I don’t think she hears me.”
Later, on the sidewalk, Kate wanted to dissect what had happened, but Peter told her he was too tired. He went back to his own apartment that night and didn’t return her calls, which he must have known would drive her crazy. Crazy enough, in fact, that she’d shown up at his door the next night wearing ridiculous lingerie under a trench coat, her birth control pills forgotten in her rush to catch him in the sliver of time she’d known he would be home between work and his regularly scheduled Thursday poker game.
“Blow the game off,” she’d told him, batting her eyelashes so hard that one dislodged into her eye and blurred her vision. “Be spontaneous.”
The memory makes her cringe. Of course this was the night she got pregnant. She does something impulsive, and look what happens. Murphy’s Law. She shakes her head and pulls herself up to her desk, glancing at her e-mail to ground herself in the present.
“The bunny crackers are all done,” Vanessa is saying, half-muffled. “How about a banana?” In the background, Lucy wails.
“Do you want to go?” Kate asks. It still unnerves her that her friend is now someone’s mother—has, in fact, devoted her life to being someone’s mother. Vanessa, who always seemed destined to live a glamorous, fast-paced life. Kate realizes she envies the life her friend has ended up with—the happy marriage, the embrace of motherhood, the lifeboat of family bobbing through an ever-changing city—more than the life her friend had seemed determined to lead for all those years.
“No, I just need to keep walking. She’s fine when we’re moving.”
“Enough with my sob story. What’s new with you guys? How’s Lucy?”
“Oh, she’s great. She’s become very opinionated about what she wears. Every morning is a battle. My parents, of course, say this is karmic retribution. Anyway, our next big thing is tackling potty training so she’s ready for preschool in the fall, but I’m starting to wonder if she’s too young.”
“For potty training or school?”
“Well, both. She’s only two. I don’t know, the idea of dropping her off and—”
Kate looks down and notices her other phone line is blinking. Lisa cracks open the door and sticks her head in, whispering the name of a senior partner.
“Shoot!” Kate says, interrupting Vanessa. “I have to go. I’m supposed to be on another call right now.”
“You called me,” Vanessa says coolly.
Kate feels an automatic impulse to acquiesce, to do anything to get back in Vanessa’s good graces. But she is an adult and she has a partner-track position at WebsterPrice, the biggest firm in Philadelphia, and she has a few other things on her mind than making sure Vanessa likes her right that second. “Sorry, V,” she says. “I’ll call you later.”
That night, Kate takes Gracie on a long walk. When they reach Twelfth Street, Gracie turns and looks over her shoulder, tail wagging, eyes bright and sure. “Not today, Gracie,” Kate says. “We’re not visiting him today.” Kate has always spoken out loud in full sentences to her dog in the middle of the city, but today she feels self-conscious about it. Her fragility makes her uncomfortable, but it has a familiarity, too, like the biting cold of winter that you only half forget during other seasons.
When they reach her parents’ house, the house where she grew up, her mother is on the stoop, locking the front door behind her.
“Oh my goodness, Kate! I was just coming to see you,” she says, turning. Kate inherited her mother’s frame—all lean limbs and jutting clavicles no matter how many egg salad hoagies they eat. Her mother retired six months earlier from a long career in the marketing department of a pharmaceutical company and, ever since, her outfits seem to be culled from the wardrobes of two different women. Tonight she has paired black exercise leggings with a chiffon-trimmed cardigan and she is carrying an expensive-looking leather tote bag. Kate wishes her mother would just choose one look: the comfortable, sporty retiree or the posh, pulled-together one. This muddle makes her heart hurt.
Gracie bounds forward and snorts joyfully into Kate’s mother’s crotch. “You were?” Kate asks.
“Yes. I wanted to see how you were doing. In person.”
“Oh, Mom, that’s sweet, but don’t worry. I’m fine.”
Her mother gives her a troubled look and adjusts the purse strap on her shoulder. “What are you doing here then?”
“Gracie wanted an after-dinner treat. And it seemed like a nice night for a walk.”
Kate’s mother looks up at the pastel-streaked sky and smiles. Kate just manages to resist falling into her arms. “You’re right. It’s gorgeous. Let’s go sit out back.”
The house is narrow and warm. The efforts of a professional decorator had been obscured long ago by additions of lamps and bookcases and family photos in mismatched frames. There is Colin in his lacrosse pads, stick resting on his shoulder. There are Kate and Colin on their first day of fourth grade, Kate in Laura Ashley, Colin in Polo. Kate can still feel the weight of her overstuffed backpack. Colin is everywhere here; her mother will never take these photos down. Still, as the years tick by, new photos of Kate will outnumber old ones of Colin, the house shifting in small ways, evolving over time in accordance with no plan at all.
Unclipping Gracie’s leash, Ka
te hears the thunk of her father setting a beer bottle down on a TV table in the den. It’s a house in which you never have to ask where anyone is—if you stop and listen, it’s possible to detect the location of every person presently under the roof. Was that why Colin was always leaving? Was he seeking privacy the only place he could find it—away from these small, cramped rooms? It’s tempting to believe, for a moment, that this intimacy she has always loved, this ability to predict what you will find around every corner, is the very thing that had driven her brother away. It is so tempting to believe it could all boil down to one simple thing: a too-small house.
Her mother heads straight to the kitchen for drinks, and Kate and Gracie stop in the den on their way through the house. Her father is doing a crossword puzzle and watching the Phillies. The room smells of Pep O Mint Life Savers and Yuengling, a minty, yeasty, so-wrong-it’s-right mix that might as well be her father’s signature scent.
