by Laura Dave
“And, also, no.”
53
So when I said put the ingredients on top, I didn’t mean you should throw the baby out with the fucking bathwater.”
Rain and I were sitting on the steps outside the front door, my belly starting to stick out.
“I did that when I was twenty-six, and it didn’t work out.”
“But this new show sounds like it would have been different.”
I thought of what would be required. Social media and live television and Instagram updates sweeping me up, imploring me to let people into my world, into my experience, before I even knew what that experience was adding up to. Maybe I had been burned so badly I was officially a Luddite. I was certainly getting emotional during this pregnancy. But I now understood something about when I wanted to share myself. And why.
My sister shook her head, like I was crazy, though I could see she was also a little impressed.
“I guess it’s a good thing you have job security,” she said sarcastically.
I laughed. “I do have a proposition for you,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a way for Sammy to go to that school.”
“Maybe we should go back to you waiting outside until we fall asleep,” she said.
I looked at her. “I almost took the show, just so I could get you guys set up in a nice apartment, make it so you didn’t have to work. But I figured you wouldn’t go for that anyway.”
“You figured right.”
“The school has a special weekend program. And I have some money from the apartment. Money I could stretch. I can’t stay in Montauk anyway. What if I got a place in Harlem? Near the school? Sammy could stay with me on the weekends. That’s one night away from you a week. And she’d get to do a bunch of nerdy kid things. It’s just one night, but if it works out, we could revisit the full-time thing.”
“No fucking way.”
“Okay, we won’t revisit. But the weekend thing, it’d be good for her. And maybe for you too.”
She looked at me like she might yell. And like she might say yes. It could go either way. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
“You will? Really?”
“Yes.”
It was a nice moment. No one reaching in to hug each other, no one offering anything definitive. But nice. At least it was until two headlights interrupted us. A guy drove down the driveway. And then got out of his car.
Danny. My heart skipped a beat, even at the sight of him. His hands were in his jeans pockets, his uneven button-down, soft against his skin. He looked up and offered a small smile.
“Oh, brother,” Rain said, shaking her head.
I wrapped my sweater around my small belly as he walked over to us. And I could feel it, my sister was steeling herself.
“Hey,” Danny said.
“Hi,” I said.
Rain shot him a look.
Danny nodded at her. “It’s nice to see you, Rain,” he said.
She pointed right in his face. “You did a shitty thing, Danny,” she said. “No, you did two shitty things, because now I’m in a position of having to stick up for my sister, and you know how much that pisses me off. You’re not invited into the house.”
“I’ll stay out here,” he said.
She stood up and looked at me.
“He’s not going in the house,” she said.
“I hear you.”
She turned back to Danny. “And she’s picking up my kid in fifteen minutes, so don’t make her late,” she said.
“I’ve got it,” Danny said.
She gave him a last look.
Then she disappeared inside, and we were alone. He smiled, taking me in, not saying anything.
“You look good. Can I say that?”
I nodded. “I’m doing well.”
Danny smiled—a real smile—like he could see it. Like that was enough for him. Fourteen years. He knew I was telling the truth.
Then he took in the property. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here. It looks different.”
I motioned toward the main house. “There used to be a lot more room.”
He laughed. “Yeah, well. I remember the guesthouse being pretty cozy,” he said.
I thought about it too. The first time I had brought him home with me from college, we’d stayed there. My father had liked Danny, so we ended up spending a little bit of time with him. Danny brought out the best of my father. It was almost enough to make me think it could be different between us. Danny had always had that power—how had I given it away?—the power to make anything feel possible.
He motioned toward the step where I sat. “May I?”
I shrugged. “You might as well.”
Danny took the seat next to me, though he kept looking straight ahead, which was a good thing. I could feel the heat coming off of him, warming me, even from several inches away.
“So . . . I just wanted you to know that I pulled down the site. Ain’t No Sunshine is no more.”
“You do realize anyone can google me and they’ll see everything, right?”
“They’ll stop googling after a while. If they haven’t already.”
“Danny, if that’s your idea of an apology . . .”
“It’s not.”
He focused on his hands, his wedding ring still there. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
“I’m not here to apologize,” he said. “And I’m not here to argue with you about whether I should.”
“So why are you here?”
“I kept thinking that I had to do it, to help you, regardless of what it did to us. It’s weird, I thought I wouldn’t care if you hated me,” he said. “Turns out I was wrong on that front.”
He paused.
“Turns out I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I looked at him. It was the kindest thing he could say, but it wasn’t enough. Fourteen years. I knew he wasn’t willing to let go, maybe neither of us was. But that was different from knowing how to hold on. Neither of us knew if we could really do that—with so much negative stuff between us now. Except I couldn’t feel the negative stuff. When I was with him, actually sitting there with him, he just felt like Danny. Maybe that wasn’t enough either. But it felt like a good place to start.
“There was another way, Danny.”
“Maybe. But this way worked.”
It had worked.
“I’m pregnant.”
Danny turned and looked at me. “Really?”
I nodded.
He turned away. “I’m going to need a minute to process that,” he said.
I started counting in my head, but before I even got to ten, he reached out and held me to him.
54
You probably didn’t think I was long for 28—or maybe you did. Maybe, after I turned Julie down (and Z turned me down), you thought this story would end with Z changing his mind, giving me a real job, a real shot at the restaurant. It would have had a certain symmetry to it. The man I had thought would be the way back to my old life would instead lead the charge to my new one.
After all, how often do you meet your opposite self? Hadn’t Chef Z been mine? Here was a man completely uninterested in the very things I had pursued—stardom, commercial success, the praise of others. He had given them away a long time ago. And even though they had found their way to him again, he seemed to give them the amount of time they deserved.
Very little.
There was a lesson in that, which Z had taught me, about what we should pay attention to instead. About taking a hard look at what we are willing to throw away, about what we should be letting it show us.
There was also a lesson in unmitigated honesty.
“Please get out of my face!” he said when I found him in the wine cellar.
And how we should temper it.
I almost turned around and gave Lottie my notice instead. She also wouldn’t have particularly cared, but she was a lot less scary.
But after I didn’t run away, Z see
med mildly interested in what I wanted. “Speak, already,” he said.
“I’m moving to New York,” I said.
He sighed, not turning from his bottle search. “I thought you wanted a promotion.”
“You said no. Plus, I’m having a baby. And the father is in New York. And I hate it here. I mean, not here at the restaurant. Here in the Hamptons, though.”
He shot me a look, like I had stepped on his face. “That was a longer answer than I was looking for.”
“I don’t have a job there,” I said. “And I could use one.”
“Could you?”
“If you know of anything.”
“If I know of anything?”
It was a crazy thing to ask him for, and I knew it. And he knew it. But I didn’t actually expect his help. I just thought it would give him an opportunity to say good-bye in his own Chef Z way.
And it did.
Chef Z smiled, like he was going to say he was going to help, like he was going to say he knew a guy, like he was going to say I’d become indispensable to him.
“The radishes are shit tonight,” he said.
I smiled. “Is that right?”
He nodded. “Take a bucket of them. And go.”
55
The morning I left for New York—to find an apartment, to begin the process of starting again—I found Ethan at the end of the driveway, getting out of his car.
He had been avoiding spending too much time with me, so I was surprised when I walked outside, bag in hand, and saw him walking toward the guesthouse.
“Don’t get excited,” he said. “I’m just going to see my friend.”
“Are you?”
He shrugged. “Depends how this goes,” he said.
I motioned toward the top step, and he motioned toward the bottom one.
“Meet you in the middle?” I said.
He smiled, and we both sat down.
He pointed at the bag I was holding in my hands. “What’s in there?”
“Lunch,” I said. “I’m taking the train to New York.”
He looked at the bag, which was incredibly full: two sandwiches, a salad, a large iced tea.
“Are you sure that’s enough? You’ll be on the train for at least two hours. Maybe three.”
“Very funny.”
“What are you doing in New York?”
I touched my belly. “I’m going to find out if this is a girl or a boy.”
“It’s a girl.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The old wives’ tale. When you’re having a boy, it gives you beauty. And when you’re having a girl . . .”
I laughed. “Hey! Not friendly.”
He shrugged. “You’ve looked better.”
“You’re right about that.”
He smiled. “Is the husband going with you?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Good.” He nodded. “That’s good.”
I started to agree, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. Everything was different between Danny and me now—a little forced, fairly tense. I didn’t want to volunteer that part either. Danny and I would either work it out or we wouldn’t. And it was better for Ethan to think we would. It was probably better for all of us to think that, but how could we work it out?
After all, what would that story sound like? We had been married, and I had been unfaithful. And he had sold out our entire lives. And then, we worked it out. It wasn’t a good story. It wasn’t a story that sells. In the story that sells, he would have forgiven me before he knew I was pregnant. In the story that sells, there wouldn’t have been infidelity and betrayal. There wouldn’t be someone new sitting in front of me that I didn’t want to say good-bye to. There would have been a pervasive love that wouldn’t have allowed me to sell my husband out, even when my entire world was for sale.
Yet, maybe having the right story didn’t matter. Maybe wanting everything to sound a certain way was how I’d ended up in this mess. Maybe all that mattered was that I was having dinner with Danny tonight, just the two of us, and the possibility of that made me happy.
I did, just, feel happy. And free. It was a weird moment to feel free—with a baby growing inside me. But I’d shed the skin of the wrong life. And there it was, handed to me like a prize. Happiness, freedom. A little bit of both.
Ethan smiled, kindly. “All right,” he said. “Life’s too short for the awkwardness. When you get back, let me know, we’ll go drink cider or something.”
“That sounds . . . awful,” I said.
“What? I’m running out of nonalcoholic choices.”
“Maybe you just want to give me a lift to the station instead?” I said. “We could catch up now.”
“No,” he said. “Thanks anyway. I’ve got plans with my friend.”
I looked at my old home, his girlfriend inside. “You deserve so much better than that. And maybe I don’t have the right to say it, but you do know that, right?”
“They’re just plans,” he said. “Let me know if I should break them.”
Ethan started to walk toward his girlfriend’s house. Then he turned back.
“Hey. It’s probably a boy. You’ve never looked better.”
“You are lying . . .”
He shrugged, turned back around. “Well, if anyone should know.”
56
Here’s the last thing I’m going to tell you, at least for now. I left my car out in Montauk and took the train back to New York for many reasons. The main one was so that Sammy would know I was coming back. We made a weekend plan, just the two of us, Rain and Thomas finally going away on their engagement weekend. If Rain knew something was up beyond a weekend away, she wasn’t letting on. She casually said, See you soon, trusting me to come through for her. We had that, between us, again.
So I wasn’t leaving Montauk that day for good, but I would have to leave soon. I would have to set up shop and get ready for the baby and find a job somewhere. Chef Z, in the end, did help a little with that. He put me in touch with a woman who owned a toy store, a few blocks from where I used to live. The woman was a frequent guest at 28. Her store was so sweet—she only sold wooden toys. Noah’s Arks and train sets. Her husband was a woodworker and apparently made all the toys himself.
They were opening a second store down the street—this one a specialty food store, this one her dream. Featuring off-the-beaten-path foods: olive oils from northern Kentucky, pinot noir from West Sonoma County, ginger scones from a bakery in Big Sur.
Chef had Lottie call to tell me they needed someone to run the shop. It sounds pretty great, actually, but it’s only tangentially related to cooking, I’d said. I could hear Z scream in the background, So are you.
Then Lottie hung up the phone.
“Excuse me?”
I looked up from my window seat on the train to see a blond girl, mid-twenties, staring down at me. Smiling. I turned off the music.
“Are you Sunshine Mackenzie? The Sunshine? Like . . . of A Little Sunshine?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Her smile disappeared. “Well, either you are or you aren’t.”
It seemed like a smart thing to say, except it wasn’t true. We are and we aren’t. We try and we fail. We tell the truth and then we lie. We want to be a part of things so badly that we’ll pretend to be anyone to get into the room. And pretend to be someone else just to stay there. We want to be seen and we want people to guess. We want them to understand. We want to be forgiven. We forgive ourselves. We start again.
“I just wanted a selfie for my Instagram,” Blondie said. “Can we do it anyway? No one will know.”
“You’ve got a lot of followers?”
“About fifty thousand.”
“Seriously? What do you do that you have so many followers?”
I knew that I sounded about a thousand years old, but she smiled again, pleased that I thought she was important. “That’s like barely any.”
Then she bent down, posed, an
d waited for me to get camera-ready too.
So I did. On the local train—somewhere between New York and Montauk, somewhere between the old life and the new one—Sunshine Mackenzie covered her belly (that wasn’t their business) and made the peace sign for fifty thousand people she didn’t know.
The girl looked at the photograph, analyzing it. “Not bad,” she said. “But maybe we should do another without you making a peace sign? No one does that anymore.”
I shrugged. “Consider it a throwback to a different time.”
She looked annoyed. “The sixties?”
Then she clicked a button as she walked away.
She didn’t say Thank you, or See you around.
She wasn’t interested.
If I were a betting woman, I’d say she posted the photograph anyway. Maybe I just like to think she did. People would send in comments asking if I was nice (Totally!), if I had gotten fat (A little . . . yes!!), and one person would ask who I was (The fake cooking show, remember?).
Most of them would. Some of them wouldn’t. The rest of them wouldn’t care.
Which, you should know, was a great way for Sunshine to say good-bye.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Suzanne Gluck and Marysue Rucci. You remain the dream team.
My gratitude to everyone who gave this novel a great publishing home, especially Carolyn Reidy, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Elizabeth Breeden, Cary Goldstein, Zachary Knoll, Sarah Reidy, Clio Seraphim, and Kitty Dulin.
I owe so much to the people who provided insight into Sunshine’s world. Several of you asked to remain anonymous, so I’ll thank you in a different forum than this, but please know your insight and humor made researching Sunshine a treat.
I can’t say thank you enough to Sylvie Rabineau, and to my early readers, whose feedback was invaluable.
Thank you to my parents, Rochelle and Andrew Dave, and the entire Dave and Singer families. And much love to my wonderful friends.
Finally, my son and my husband. I love you with all my heart.
If you loved Hello, Sunshine, check out Laura Dave’s “impossible to put down” (Elle - #1 Reader’s Prize Selection) novel Eight Hundred Grapes!
