The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  “Deal,” she said. We started up the mile-long mountain road toward Jordana’s place. When we finally pulled into the driveway and neared the house, I noticed a white Cadillac parked beside the front porch.

  “Whose car is that?” I asked, leaning forward in my seat to read the New Jersey vanity plate: SCARD1NO.

  Becca had a stunned expression. “That,” she said, “is my mother-in-law’s.”

  Chapter 12: Nolan

  “It’s all packed,” my mother whispered, gently nudging me awake.

  I rolled over and turned my back to her in protest, just as I had as a child every Monday morning before school.

  “Come, Patatino, get outta bed,” she prodded. “It’s time to make up with your wife. So you had a fight. Okay, fine. It happens. Now you go fix it. I just took my soup out of the freezer and put it in the car. I double-plastic-baggied it in case it defrosts before you get there. I don’t want no water ring all over my new beige leather seats.”

  “Ma.” I groaned and rubbed my eyes. “She’s not gonna want minestrone for breakfast.”

  “Stunad!” Mama muttered, and playfully smacked my head. “Just give her the peace offering and tell her you’re sorry.”

  But I’m not sorry, I wanted to say. I’ve been honest. Why should I apologize for speaking my mind?

  Despite the hour and my exhaustion, I remained a dutiful son who obeyed his mother’s command. I showered, dressed, accepted the keys to her Cadillac, and backed out of the driveway at exactly six thirty. But as I pulled around the corner and onto the main road, I knew I wasn’t yet ready to see Becca. I needed more time to myself. More of an opportunity to process everything in solitude, but where could I go? I had outstayed my welcome with my parents, my own home was not an option, and I would have preferred a root canal to shacking up alone in a hotel on the anniversary of falling in love with my wife.

  I drove past the entrance to the highway and pulled into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up breakfast and devise a plan. Before exiting the car, I grabbed my wallet and phone and noticed a new message in my inbox from Ilene Weston.

  Nolan,

  Just wanted to give you a status update. My risk and compliance team, as well as the general counsel and managing partners, will be having a conference call in the next 24 hours to discuss the Thibault deal. You should be aware that Thibault has made passing references to a lawsuit against the firm.

  I’ll be in touch soon.

  Ilene Weston

  Chief, Risk Management

  Gordon, Michaelson & Stewart, LLP

  Dear Ilene,

  Thanks for the update. Please continue to keep me posted. Have a great weekend.

  Nolan

  A lawsuit? Oh my God! But I quickly reassured myself: Simple. Direct. No need to apologize or elaborate. I clicked out of my email, exited the car, and headed into Dunkin’ Donuts. While a young, uniformed cashier with horrific acne filled my order, I nervously strummed my fingers on a Formica counter and stared up at the flat-screen TV above the sugar-packet console.

  Escape! A throaty woman’s voice beckoned on the commercial as images of cocktails and casinos flashed across the screen.

  “You ever been?” the cashier asked, nodding toward the monitor. He plunked a Styrofoam cup of coffee down in front of me.

  “Atlantic City? No, not in years,” I said dismissively. “Last time I was in AC was my brother’s bachelor party, and now his youngest kid’s graduating high school.”

  “Well, then I guess you’re overdue for a trip,” he said, as I paid the bill. “Enjoy your holiday, sir.”

  By the time I reached the car, I knew exactly where I’d be spending the rest of the weekend. I peeled out of the parking lot and merged onto the Garden State Parkway South toward Atlantic City—the perfect destination for two days’ worth of distractions.

  I cracked the sunroof, flipped through my mother’s preprogrammed radio stations—a cornucopia of soft rock, smooth jazz, and Radio Italy Live, where practically every song had someone crooning about amore—and took in the early-morning open road. This is what I need, I thought, as I set the cruise control to sixty-five miles per hour.

  Twenty minutes into my ride, just as I was passing the exit for Newark Airport, my phone rang. The number on the screen was my in-laws’ apartment.

  They must have spoken with Becca about our fight and are calling to disown me.

  “Hello?” I said flatly, as I held the phone to my ear. I hadn’t bothered to program my number into the Cadillac’s Bluetooth system.

  “Good morning, Daddy!” Emma said. My heart melted, as always, at the sound of her high-pitched voice and the way she enunciated the dd in Daddy. “We’re having chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Do you want me to save some? You and Mommy can have them as a snack when you come home tomorrow? I told Grandma you like breakfast for dinner sometimes, so she said I could call and ask if we should make extras for you.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I would love that! Thank you so much!” I said enthusiastically, hoping she wouldn’t detect any tension in my voice.

  “Okay. Can you put Mommy on the phone? I want to ask her if she wants me to add sprinkles and marshmallows to her pancakes.”

  My stomach churned as I crafted a response. “Mommy’s with her friends right now, sweetheart. You can call her cell phone if you like.”

  “Grandma thought it was too early to call; she thought I would wake you up! I knew I was right!” After her exclamation, I heard her shout out to my mother-in-law, “See, Grandma, I told you I wouldn’t wake them! Mommy’s with her friends.”

  “They got up and out before seven a.m.?” I heard Arlene say in the background.

  Here we go, I thought.

  “Emma, honey, listen,” I said, “I’m just out picking up something to eat. You can try Mommy and ask her about the pancakes. I’m sure she would love to hear from you.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” she said, and hung up before I had a chance to say goodbye.

  Though I hadn’t told an outright lie (I had stopped at Dunkin Donuts, and Becca was with her friends), what I had said to my daughter was not entirely truthful, either. She deserves better than this, I scolded myself. This child oozes goodness and sweetness and innocence; she deserves more. She deserves stability.

  I pulled into a roadside gas station and filled up. I couldn’t even look at my reflection in the Cadillac’s tinted windows as I leaned against the door and held the pump in the tank.

  My job is intact, I’m a valued employee, and there will be no lawsuit, I reassured myself, as the gas glugged into the car. Seth will come through with the second opinion for Becca, and that will make all the difference. She was just in shock when we spoke with the first plastic surgeon. She’ll definitely be more clearheaded by next week and will realize that I’m right. I took a deep breath and thought about Emma. Everything will be just fine. Just keep your family together. I started up the car and pulled back onto the highway. This time, however, I headed north, to the Berkshires.

  Three hours later, I pulled into Jordana’s driveway. I grabbed the plastic container of soup—which was still frozen—walked up to the front porch, and knocked on the door.

  “Come in! It’s unlocked,” I heard Jordana call out.

  When I pushed through the door, I saw Seth and Lex seated on the kitchen island stools, drinking out of mugs. Jordana was arranging food on a platter. None of them was looking up when I stepped inside.

  “Good morning,” I said. All three rotated toward me. For a moment, they seemed frozen. But after a beat, Jordana wiped her hands on a dish towel and ran over to greet me.

  “I knew you’d make it,” she said, reaching up to hug me. “We missed you. So glad you’re here. Didn’t I tell you he’d make it?” she said, turning back to Seth and Lex with I told you so written all over her face. They remained on the stools and stared coolly at me.

  Seth wouldn’t stand or greet me. He just sat there, looking me over as he sipped from his
mug. I immediately felt the sting. I knew my absence had let them down, but I didn’t regret it—I’d needed that time to myself. Yes, I was late, but I’d shown up and I was determined to have a smooth weekend.

  “Come on in,” Jordana said, grabbing my hand and leading me toward the others. “No bags?”

  “No, no bags. But I have this. It needs to go in the fridge. It’s soup. Don’t ask,” I said, and handed over the Tupperware.

  “Hey, man, where ya been?” Seth finally said.

  I went over to their stools to melt the ice. I patted Seth on the back and then leaned in to kiss Lex. “Good to see you, Lex. It’s been years! You look wonderful.” She did. With their workout clothes, running shoes, and still-perspiring faces, they had clearly just come in from a morning run. Despite her matted ponytail, Lex was glistening and gorgeous.

  Lex didn’t respond to my compliment. She flashed a quick smile that immediately dissolved into a snobbish stare that Becca once described as Lex’s resting bitch face. “Trust me, she’s an awesome person inside,” I recalled my wife telling me the first time she introduced me to Lex. “She sometimes comes across as a little cold and judgmental, but there’s a golden heart in there. Just give her a chance.”

  After a slow, condescending once-over, Lex averted her eyes.

  Okay, so this is how it’s going to be, I thought.

  “Would you look at that!” Jordana suddenly piped up and pointed toward the driveway through the front window. “Perfect timing. Becca’s back!”

  I wondered if my arrival would elate her or infuriate her. “Where’d she go?” I asked.

  “If you’d been here, you wouldn’t have to ask,” Lex muttered under her breath. She stepped off the stool and brushed past me on her way to the door.

  I stood nervously on the porch, leaning against one of the supporting wooden beams, and watched as Jordana, Seth, and Lex swarmed around my wife like bees to a hive. They surrounded her as she exited the driver’s seat of a car I didn’t recognize. When Holly emerged from the passenger side, she joined the others. They were protecting Becca from the enemy, and that enemy, I realized, was me.

  Jordana ran up to the porch, grabbed my hand, and led me down the path. “Look who I found,” she announced. She staked her ground between us while Lex, Seth, and Holly stood right behind Becca, ready to sting the moment she issued the signal.

  There was something very West Side Story about the whole scene, as if we were two gangs battling for control of their turf. It was an obvious showdown over who knew Becca best and who loved her more.

  “Hey, you’re here,” Becca said. She smiled, and I wanted to scoop her up and carry her away in my arms, the way I did in the Dating Game back in college.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Lex fold her arms across her chest and could hear her quietly harrumph. She probably perceived Becca’s welcoming tone as weakness.

  “Of course I’m here, I wouldn’t have missed it,” I said, as if she were crazy for thinking otherwise. I walked over to hug her. She rested the side of her face against my chest, and I lowered my head so my cheek touched her hair. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her close, feeling her breasts press up against me and breathing in her familiar, clean scent—a subtle mix of Dove soap and Tide laundry detergent. Though I knew our tension was unresolved, in that moment, I felt a peaceful sense of homecoming.

  All of a sudden, we heard someone call out “Holly” from the base of the driveway. There was Adam, panting as he walked slowly up to the top. “I’ve been looking everywhere.” Pant. “I walked all around the property.” Pant. “I went down to the lake.” Pant. Pant. He wiped his brow, leaned forward, rested his hands on his knees, and caught his breath. “Where have you been?”

  Holly shot a quick look at my wife. Becca responded with the same you can do it nod she often gives Emma when she’s afraid to try something new.

  “I’m fine,” Holly said. She started wobbling over to her husband, who looked genuinely scared.

  “Let’s go inside,” Jordana said to Seth and Lex, clearly trying to give both couples some privacy. Seth and Lex followed her in. A minute later, Adam and Holly had disappeared down the driveway and Becca and I were alone.

  “You smell like Emilio’s boys” was the first thing Becca said to me. “Like you bathed in Drakkar Noir and are about to go clubbing.”

  I laughed. “It’s body wash. It was the only stuff my parents had in the guest bathroom.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, the same way Lex had earlier.

  “I went to my parents’ for the night,” I said.

  “I know. I saw Kathy Ireland in the background on your video to Emma.”

  “Ah, nice job, Columbo,” I said.

  “I guess I needed some space.”

  She looked hurt. “You needed space from me?”

  “From you, from everything,” I said breezily.

  Think of Emma. Remember your mission: keep the family together, I told myself.

  “Come,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go for a walk.” For the next half-hour, we toured the property and skirted anything of import. We stood silently for several minutes to observe a hummingbird on a birdfeeder. We commented on how sweet the country air smelled. We talked about how Emma would love the colorful flowers in Jordana’s backyard and promised to pick some to take home to her. We admired Sal’s vegetable garden—which was the size of our living room—and I vowed to tease Sal that he must be compensating for something by growing such massive zucchini.

  We walked on eggshells, as if we’d been set up on a blind date. There were a million questions to ask, but neither of us seemed poised for interrogation. Eventually, we headed back up to the front lawn and collapsed into the hammock.

  “Ahh.” I exhaled when we finally settled into a comfortable position. “I think my ass is scraping the ground.”

  “Other than the fact that you smell like a Russian nightclub, I’m good,” she said, reclining beside me.

  We had run out of small talk. I grabbed her hand. Our fingers interlaced, and I gave our united knuckles a long kiss.

  “We’ll figure it out, Bec,” I whispered. “You know, the last time we lay in a hammock like this was at that resort in California the weekend before Emma was born.”

  “That feels like a lifetime ago.”

  “Seven years. Remember how nervous you were that you’d lose the papers proving Elizabeth was our surrogate—that the baby was ours, not hers?”

  “Yeah. I brought those manila files everywhere with me that weekend. I put them in the beach bag, took them to the restaurants in my purse . . .”

  “But I was the one who was a complete wreck the day she was born,” I admitted. “I was pacing and didn’t shut up.”

  “You weren’t a wreck,” Becca said. “You were just giddy. And the video camera was glued to your hand. You recorded random people in the hospital walking to get coffee, the magazines on a coffee table, our family taking pictures of you videotaping them . . .”

  We laughed and then both grew quiet. My mind traveled back to that magnificent day. I thought about the DVD of Emma’s birth and how it opens with me having a conversation with Becca’s parents in a hotel suite. Her dad occupies a wing chair while her mom sits demurely on a couch. An empty car seat and stroller rest against a window in the background, warming in the California sun. Her parents appear to be engrossed in their books until I announce that the camera is on, and then they suddenly jolt to life.

  My remarks from behind the Sony Handycam are peppered with that laugh I get when I’m über-excited about something. It’s the same giggle I emit when I’m nervous, the one that was sprinkled into my marriage proposal to Becca (and I quote): “Hee-hee . . . Will you, hee-hee, marry me? Hee-hee . . . Hee-hee . . .”

  The energy and joy in the room are palpable—especially because it’s early, 7:00 a.m., and everyone appears caffeinated, even though they have yet to partake of the all-inclusiv
e continental breakfast in the hotel lobby.

  “Okay, so, what’s today?” I ask Becca’s father at the start of the DVD.

  “Here we are in beautiful California, awaiting the arrival of our first grandchild, your first child,” he says in his thick Brooklyn accent, leaning back on the burgundy wing chair and resting the book in his lap. “Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Will it be healthy? Who does it look like?”

  “I’ve been up since three thirty this morning,” her mother whispers, leaning into the camera lens as if she is sharing an intimate secret with the viewer.

  Her dad continues speaking, growing more dramatic with each word. “We have all descended upon California for the arrival of this baby. Our hopes, our dreams, our fantasies—we’re all starting to imagine and project onto you, child! Get out now! Run! Go!”

  Every time I watch this video, I can’t help but think, They really deserve this. Her parents probably never thought that day would come. After all they went through with Becca’s illness—after the inconceivably difficult choices they were forced to make, after the fear, the pain, the prayer—there we were at an extended-stay hotel where the manager must have gotten a seriously steep discount on Native American–themed polyester fabric, and life couldn’t have been sweeter.

  Now, seven years later, I turned to Becca on the hammock.

  “Remember when the OR nurse burst through the doors and pulled down her mask?” I asked. “Do you remember what she said?”

  “Congratulations! You have a daughter!” we said in unison.

  “I’ll never forget it.” I gave her a squeeze. This is why I came up to Jordana’s. This is what matters.

  “Me neither, and you know what else I won’t forget?” she said, her eyes suddenly wet. “Seeing our whole family crowd together by the big glass nursery window as they watched us hold Emma for the first time.”

  An image flashed across my mind: my in-laws looking down at Becca as she sat in a rocking chair, looking down at her newborn in her arms.