by Anne Dayton
Raquel starts laughing so I stop. “I know I’m not exactly the crunchy, organic, have-your-baby-in-a-bathtub kind of person. Maybe it was sheer boredom that drove me to it. But I don’t know. I just want to try it. This is probably going to be my last one, Jane.” She winces as a contraction racks her body. Jack grabs her hand, and she squeezes, a look of determination on her face.
“Okay, just one last question for you,” I say as the pains pass and she relaxes back against the pillows. “I’m here because?”
“If I do this,” she gives me a thumbs up, “you have to tackle Dolores and go find a doctor to give me enough drugs to keep me under for the first year of the baby’s life.”
I slip in and steal a peek at Robinson Hardaway, the new addition to the Hardaway clan. Raquel is now in a private room and her perfect little baby boy gets to sleep in his own little bassinet next to her. Raquel has been asleep for hours, worn out from her successful natural childbirth, and Jack left an hour ago to get Haven and Olivia from their neighbor’s place and take them home. I promised to stay a while with Raquel and the baby. I go over to the little hand sanitizer station and clean my hands and then walk back to Robinson, sleeping so peacefully. I put my pinky finger near his hand, and he grabs it without waking. My heart soars.
I watch the perfect new baby, and in the quiet of the still hospital, my own life floods back to me. With everything that has been going on, I haven’t had a chance yet to really stop and process Mary Sue’s death, or the hours that Lee spent on the phone calling his family and Mary Sue’s friends. And I remember the time I spent with her, her time in the hospital, her final letter. Somehow it feels so fitting to be thinking of her with little Robinson sleeping soundly before me. I am reminded that God has a wonderful plan for our lives, and even when it doesn’t make sense and it feels cruel, he’s still there. He’s weaving it all together in an elaborate and indiscernible pattern. A birth. A death. And so it goes in his time.
Chapter 24
I am sitting in Carter Associates of Manhattan hoping that Mr. Glassman will be able to work me in today. I made the poor, nervous front-desk woman with the tight bun even more anxious by asking her to tell Mr. Glassman that I will not be leaving today until he meets with me. She hung up the phone and said to me, “He said, ‘Perchance.’ I’m—I’m not really sure what that means.” I told her I’d just keep waiting.
But one hour and four Cosmo magazines later, I’m wondering if I should really wait much longer. If Coates would just let me talk to him one more time, I could make it all okay. I know I could. I’ve even got my cell phone turned off now.
Fifteen minutes later her phone rings, and she waves her arms at me. I walk over to her desk. “Mr. Glassman will see you now,” she says. “Just walk through the glass doors and his assistant will escort you the rest of the way.”
I thank her and then walk through glass doors to another waiting drone with a tight bun and low navy pumps.
“Right this way, please,” she says and walks me down a long hall of cubicles filled with even more women, exactly like the others. I’m wondering if they are self-replicating robots when we reach Coates’s office. I go in without being asked and shut the door behind me, and he stands up in some sort of automatic, polite gesture.
I lean against the door, and he is frozen behind his desk. I go to talk, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I’m stunned by the sight of him. He’s so gorgeous in his suit, a little self-conscious and embarrassed by my visit.
Without thinking about it, I rush over to him and lean forward and kiss him hard on the mouth. The moment my lips touch his, he puts one arm around my waist and pulls my body to his and holds my upper back in his other arm. We kiss a long time as if he is just back from war and I am the first woman he has seen in two years. At last, he pulls back, panting, and says, “Wait.” He sits down and motions to the chair across the room. “Go, sit.”
I hit my leg on the corner of his desk while I make my way to the chair. I am still panting a little from the kiss when he pulls it together enough to say something.
“Now, talk,” he says.
I look at him and can see that he feels it too. We may not exactly make sense, but we have that. We have it. We click. I just need to explain to him somehow that there’s more than that between us.
“You’re the person I want to call in the middle of night when I have that dream where I forgot to put my clothes on and everyone is laughing at me at work,” I say.
He looks at me, his brows knitting together. I decide to just keep going. “You, you make me angry,” I say and he sighs and rolls his eyes so I hurry to continue, “but it’s often because you’re right. I think it’s good that you challenge me.” He looks at me warily. “You make me better. That’s what I mean to say.”
Coates clears his throat and almost smiles at me. I need to keep going. “You turned my whole world upside down, and that’s the kind of thing I hate, only, I don’t. I mean, I should, but this time, it’s different somehow.” I sit on the edge of my chair and reach for his hands. He gives them to me.
“But what about—”
“No, shh,” I say. “This is my turn to talk. What about Tyson? It’s over. It’s been over for ages. In fact, you made me see that we never really even began. He was this ideal, this perfect guy I had always thought I’d end up with—except, well, I wasn’t thinking. I was measuring him for the tux before I stopped to consider whether he was the kind of man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But then you came in and made me see that it’s not about having a warm body, a Prince Charming, who happens to be the right size for the tux. It’s about someone who smashes everything up and makes you look at it with new eyes. More like Humpty Dumpty than Prince Charming.”
Coates raises an eyebrow at me and I try to smile confidently at him. He seems to be looking for something in my face, studying what I’m saying.
“And I think you are my Humpty Dumpty. I don’t know what this relationship will look like, and I don’t know where we’ll end up, but I don’t even care as long as we’re together.”
He remains impassive.
“I’m sorry about the mistakes I’ve made, but I’m not sorry for one moment I’ve spent with you,” I say. And then I look down and add, “I’m not sorry for that kiss when I came in either.”
“May I talk now?”
I nod, a little embarrassed at all of what I have said, feeling it filling the room now.
“Not good enough.”
My phone rings and I put the cashmere sweater back on the table. I pull the phone out from my purse. I can’t afford the sweater anyway, and it’s not like I’ll need lots of cashmere at the YMCA, or wherever I end up working. I should have known better than to come to Saks. I look down at the phone and see that Lee’s name flashes across the screen. Ever since the Tyson incident, I’ve gotten a lot more careful about looking before I leap, or flip the phone open, as the case may be.
“Lee? How are you? Is everything okay?” I ask breathlessly. I expected him to call me after Mary Sue’s funeral, but I haven’t heard a peep since he left for Charleston. I turn and walk toward the door.
“I’m fine. We’re all fine.” Wait, this can’t be Lee.
“What’s going on?”
“Child, you just aren’t going to believe how wonderful it is down here,” he says, only it’s not Lee. I would swear it’s Mary Sue, but this voice is definitely a man’s.
“Lee? Did your accent go up a few notches since you left? Or is that just my imagination?”
“Oh Jane,” he says, still drawling like a big, ripe South Carolina debutante. “You always were such a card.” I’d heard that sometimes people pick up accents when they go home, but this is ridiculous.
I shake it off. “How is everything going down there? How was the funeral? Did the lacy coffin look exactly like she wanted? Did you make sure to get the deviled eggs from Lurlene’s? Did your Uncle Bob come through with his famous boiled peanuts for the reception?”
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Lee laughs. “You have a photographic memory.”
I push the sleek glass door open and step out onto bustling Fifth Avenue. “Not really. The instructions for Mary Sue’s funeral read better than fiction, so I can’t help but remember them.”
“Everything came off just beautifully, if I do say so myself. And I got to see all of my cousins I hadn’t seen in years.”
“That’s great,” I say, stepping away from the door and resting in front of one of Saks’s famous picture windows. This one shows a family gathered around a fireplace with stacks of presents all around.
“But I have something big to tell you.”
“Oh?” I say. I’m so glad to hear him feeling better. When I packed Lee off to Charleston he still looked like a broken man. Going home does everyone good.
“I might be moving.”
“Where to? Brooklyn? The porch envy finally get to you? I said you could use it whenever you wanted.”
“No, Jane. Really move. Mama left me the house.”
I nearly drop my phone. Lee can’t move to Charleston. We live here. We’re a family. A family doesn’t split up. I put the phone to my ear again. I will be calm. He’s not in his right mind. His mother just passed away. “Um, honey,” I start. There, I’ll speak his language. Win him over. “Have you really thought about this? A free house is nice, but your life is here in New York.”
I hear Lee talk to someone in the background. “Sorry, Jane. Got some family over right now even as we speak. What were you saying?”
“You can’t move,” I say, putting my finger against my free ear to block out the noise from the street. Lee will listen to me. He always does.
“I’m not sure yet. I’m just thinking about it. But the thing is, I just can’t sell the family place.”
I try to picture him in a big wooden house in sunny South Carolina. I see him in a rocking chair on the front porch, sipping lemonade. “Don’t sell it, then. Keep it in the family. No one says you have to sell it. But your life is here. What would you do down there?”
“I play winner,” he says in the background. “Sorry, Jane. We’ve got this heated game of backgammon going among all the older cousins. Mama was the best so I’m killing all of them.” And he drops the phone again, and I hear him say, “I was taught by the best, Randy. You’re a goner.”
“Lee, listen to me,” I say, leaning against a high-rise. “I know you’re upset, but you can’t move down South. I need you,” I say.
“Aren’t you a sweetheart,” he says. “But I need to go. It’s my turn. Kiss Charlie for me.”
“I will,” I say, shaking my head in confusion.
My mother and I walk into the Geller–Zumdahl wedding at St. Patrick’s Cathedral dressed in our Sunday best. We had a rough start this morning, since we’re not exactly BFFs right now, and when she wasn’t at the Starbucks fifteen minutes after the appointed meeting time, I almost turned around and went home. But she seemed genuinely apologetic when she arrived, and I couldn’t really fault her for being delayed by helping at the scene of an accident on the way down here, so I decided to grin and bear it.
We take two programs at the door and step inside the foyer. Our eyes go up to the ceiling at once. It soars high above, glowing with an ethereal light. This church is breathtaking. The floors are stone, the intricate glasswork is brilliantly colorful, and the outside looks like an ornate Gothic wedding cake.
“What’s the waiting list like to get married here?” I whisper to Mom. There. An olive branch.
“It’s best to put your child’s name in right after her baptism.” She smiles shyly, breaking the ice. “She has until she’s twenty-five to find the guy and then after that she’s out in the cold.”
“So this means I’m getting married at McDonald’s?”
“Worse. Burger King. But I hear they give out free crowns to the both the bride and groom, so that has its merits.” We both chuckle and walk over to the ushers. As we approach, a short, balding man offers my mother his arm and asks, “Bride or groom?”
She looks at me, and I shrug.
“Bride,” I say.
“Groom,” she says at the same time.
He looks at us warily. I clear my throat, place my hand on his biceps, give a little squeeze, and flutter my eyes at him. “Ha ha. That is, we just love him so much now that we think of him as our friend too.”
“Who?” the usher asks.
I look at my mom to cue her to bail me out. I see her glance subtly at her wedding program. “Why, Brendan, silly!” She laughs awkwardly and then I laugh with her. We guffaw loudly together and the usher laughs too.
“But we’re really friends of the bride,” I say.
He smiles at us, buying it, and then leads her down the aisle of the most beautiful cathedral in New York. I trail just behind them, taking in the red carpet we walk on, the dark wooden pews, the ornate tile flooring. This place is overwhelmingly beautiful. I can only imagine the devotion of the people who built it.
Mom and I settle in a pew, and she hands me a pen.
“Don’t forget to take notes, Jane. We’re not here to pick up chicks,” she whispers.
I burst out laughing, and she shoots me a look. “Sorry,” I mumble.
She shushes me, then looks around. I look around too but find myself focusing on the hats of ladies around us. I honestly didn’t know people still wore hats with birds on them, but it looks like an entire flock has touched down around me.
“How does Patrice know these people again?” I ask. My sister-in-law-to-be doesn’t understand drawn-out family drama and has talked Mom and me into this. We’re here on a secret spy mission.
“She doesn’t,” Mom says and then writes down on her wedding program. “Four candelabras. Looks garish.”
“What?” I hiss at mom. “Are we crashing this wedding?” I am going to kill her.
Mom looks back at me innocently. “Jane,” she says with indignation. “Really. I wouldn’t crash a wedding.”
I give her my “Get serious” look.
“What? I wouldn’t. Patrice’s wedding planner, Anton, did this wedding too. He asked her to attend, but since she’s undercover at the potential honeymoon resort, she couldn’t come.”
I look around, groaning. “So where do the friends of Anton sit?”
“What do you think of the red carpet?” Mom asks, trying to sound chipper.
I lean over to get a better look at it again. “I like it.”
“Not too I-think-I’m-Princess-Diana?”
“Huh?”
“Patrice said to keep in mind that she doesn’t want to come off as showy at her wedding.”
“No red carpet then.”
“Got it. Too Diana. What do you think of the poem by the bride and groom on the back of the program?”
“Gag,” I say, laughing a little. I’d forgotten how fun Mom can be when she wants to. She draws an arrow to the poem and writes “Gag us.”
“Mom, you can’t write that.”
“What? That’s what you said.”
I grab her pen from her hand and scribble it out. Next to the poem I write, “Too much?” I whisper: “Let’s try to be diplomatic.”
She looks around and then sniffs, “I don’t know these people. What do I care?”
I turn around and peek down the aisle. I see four little flower girls in pastel dresses with miniature parasols giggling. “Write down, ‘Absolutely no parasols.’”
My mother obeys and stares at the flower girls herself. “That looks a bit like a kindergarten production of Gone with the Wind.”
I laugh. Maybe we will make it through this day after all.
“It’s hard to believe we all thought you would be the one getting married, isn’t it?”
I take it back. I am going to kill her.
“What?” I finally manage to squeak.
“Oh no,” she says, her cheeks reddening. “Jane, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Mom, why would you say that?” I
sniff as my eyes start to tear up. “If you had any idea how hard losing Ty was, you’d never say something like that.” I look away. “Or do you just not care?”
“Jane,” she says, putting her hands on my shoulders and turning me to face her. “I’m sorry. What I meant was, it’s funny how life works. How things change,” she says. “For the better.”
“What?” I wipe the tears away from my eyes.
A woman in the pew in front of us turns and hands me a tissue. “Don’t you just love weddings?” she sings, turning back to examine her program again.
“Jane, what I was trying to say is, I was wrong. I wanted you to make the choices I would have made, not the choices that were right for you. I’m sorry.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “And I’m proud of who you are.”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” I say, shaking my head.
“Jane?” She looks at me nervously. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been born a generation later. Would I have married your father? Would I have had a career of my own?” She shrugs. “I just didn’t have the choices available to you, and it’s exciting to see what you’ll do with what you’ve been given. I’m not always the best at expressing that. And sometimes I can get hung up on how I did things, wanting you to do it the same way.”
I nod and stare at my lap. She always jokes that her choices were nurse, secretary, or teacher. I wonder, what would Mom have done if she’d had any career path in the world available to her?
“I have made mistakes,” she says, “and I am sorry. But I want you to know that I love you, and I just want you to be happy.”
I look at her and study her face. I swallow my pride. “Thanks, Mom. That means a lot.”
We sit in silence, thinking, until the prelude music begins. Finally, I turn to my mother.
“So if Jim and Patrice are getting married in June,” I say, trying to make a joke to lighten the mood, “then that means Mrs. Lovell has had this reserved for her since baptism?”
“June? You mean next June, right?”
