“Already?”
“Yes.”
Gerald rose from his chair. “More cocktails?”
“Sure, why not,” Nicole piped up.
Evelyn looked at their empty glasses and was surprised to see that they had downed them so quickly. She believed that everything was fine, in moderation. She had lived through Prohibition, and maybe it was just a function of her age at that time but she saw more people overdoing it with drink then than at any other point in her life. But something about this girl’s freeness with the liquor bothered her. Was her son to be a drunk again now, on top of everything else?
In the kitchen, Gerald said, “She seems nice, at least.”
Evelyn widened her eyes. “Have you lost your mind?”
“You’re not giving her a chance.”
“Why should I? She’s the harlot who tore our lives apart, or have you forgotten?”
“Evie! Listen to yourself.”
He smiled, and reached out his arms to embrace her in an attempt at a truce. But for once she could not bring herself to do it.
“I have to fix the salads,” she said, turning her back on him. “I was expecting three, not four. I’ll have to make them smaller now.”
“I’ll set an extra place,” he said, kissing her cheek.
During the first course, Nicole commented on every object at the table: She loved the water goblets and the heavy silver and the plates. She adored the crystal chandelier.
When Evelyn carried the roast in and set it down, Nicole grabbed hold of her left hand.
“Oh my goodness, look at your diamond ring!” She turned to Teddy. “Ted, that is exquisite.”
As if they were staring into a jewelry case at Tiffany’s. As if Evelyn’s hand, Evelyn herself, had no part in the matter.
“It was my mother’s,” Gerald said.
Evelyn took a slice of roast beef before passing the tray of meat to Nicole. Usually, she would wait until her guests were served, but suddenly she saw no point in propriety.
“It really is the most beautiful ring,” Nicole said.
She was probably imagining that one day it would be hers. The thought made Evelyn want to run outside right now and toss the ring into the pond, just to make sure that this woman would never wear it, even for a second. Evelyn thought briefly of giving it to Julie anyway, divorce or not, though no doubt she would refuse it, even if Evelyn tried to persuade her to keep it for the girls.
“My best friend just got the biggest diamond from her boyfriend—well, I guess he’s her fiancé now!” Nicole smiled. “Poor guy saved up forever for that ring. He would have proposed much sooner if she hadn’t had such expensive taste.”
Evelyn thought it was vulgar, the obsession with diamonds nowadays. When she was young, only people from families like Gerald’s wore them. No one waited years to make a major life change, in want of a piece of jewelry.
Now Nicole spotted one more thing in the room to comment on.
“That painting of the dogs on a sailboat is precious,” she said.
Evelyn put a forkful of meat into her mouth so she wouldn’t be compelled to speak. She smiled through pursed lips. The dogs-on-a-sailboat painting had been a point of contention, especially when her husband insisted on hanging it in the dining room, directly across from an original Antonio Jacobsen that had been in the family since 1898.
“Evie hates it,” Gerald said. “I won it in a sweepstakes. Second place. The first prize was an actual sailboat.”
“No!” Nicole said, humoring him like he was a doddering old fool, though Gerald didn’t seem to mind. “That seems like a pretty steep drop-off.”
“That’s how it goes,” Gerald said. “I was once the first runner-up in a sweepstakes sponsored by Rolls-Royce. The winner got a Silver Cloud, with ten thousand dollars thrown in for a chauffeur. I got a case of motor oil.”
Nicole laughed. “Oh no! Bad luck!”
“But even second runner-up is a miracle,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to win anything when there’s a big corporate sponsor involved. You take Coca-Cola’s Go America Sweepstakes. They get nine million entries a year.”
“Competing for Coke?” Nicole asked.
“God no, the winner gets something in the range of twenty thousand dollars, plus a couple of cars, a motorboat, camping equipment …”
“All of which they have to pay income tax on,” Teddy said. “Some poor housewife won it a few years ago, and ended up owing the IRS more than she could ever pay.”
“Well, that would never happen to your father,” Nicole said. “Clearly, he could afford the tax and then some.”
Evelyn felt her body tense up. She wondered if Teddy would destroy their family, only to be taken in by a gold digger. Back in her teaching days, she most liked the scrappy boys who were dreamers and wanted something grand out of life. Her own son was happy to live off Gerald’s hard-earned money and the family name.
They said you couldn’t take it with you, and of course that was true. Evelyn didn’t want to. But she had hoped to pass everything on to their granddaughters, and to Julie. She would be damned if it went to these two, who didn’t even know right from wrong.
Nicole went on. “So what do you have to do to win one of these things? What skills does a person need?”
“No special skill. What you’re talking about is a contest,” Gerald said, happy as a clam with his captive audience. Her husband loved conversation, and attention even more so. She felt like he was betraying her, treating this like just another dinner party with some young couple who’d moved in down the road.
“That’s really a very different thing,” he continued. “A sweepstakes is determined by chance. A contest requires some talent, like maybe writing a jingle. Those have faded out of fashion a bit. I used to subscribe to Contest Worksheet magazine to help me with my writing, but that particular publication has changed with the times. Now it just basically lists all the sweepstakes that are out there.”
Evelyn cringed, thinking of his twenty-five-word essays on cake mix, and all the failed jingles he had thought up. Even years after it was rejected, Gerald still walked around the house proudly singing, I’m so tired! So happy to be tired! And if you really must kn-o-o-o-w, it’s thanks to Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.!
“Isn’t it really just a socially acceptable form of gambling?” Nicole asked.
“I wouldn’t say so, no,” Gerald said. “There’s never any purchase necessary. It’s strictly aboveboard. If anything, it’s just advertising. Say Skippy peanut butter runs a contest—” They had, with the top prize being a four-week world tour for two by jet. He hadn’t won. “Well, they get to set up displays in every grocery store. You’ve got to go there to get the entry forms, you see. And since you’re standing in front of this giant display, maybe you’ll just go ahead and grab a jar of Skippy while you’re at it.”
“And do you?” Nicole asked.
“Do I what?”
“Buy the Skippy.”
In truth, her husband had never set foot in a grocery store. He asked Evelyn to pick up the entry forms while she was there, or just sent his secretary to do it.
She had once forced him to turn down a prize. It was a contest sponsored by a dog food company, and Gerald won a Scottie dog, which they were supposed to pick up in Edinburgh, all expenses paid. When Evelyn pointed out that he had never once expressed interest in having a dog, he acted as deflated as a child might be by her decision; he moped around for days, telling tales of the sweet Scottie his great-grandmother had had when he was a boy.
This was what she disliked most about Gerald’s hobby; the contests made you think you needed something that, left to your own devices, you wouldn’t even want.
“Have you caught any of the new Price Is Right on television?” Gerald asked now. “You guess the prices on everyday items, like appliances and canned corn. I think I’d be quite good at it. Sometimes I quiz myself with whatever I find in the kitchen cabinets. I’m studying up!”
Evelyn buried her head in her hands, picturing Gerald on daytime TV.
“I won’t do it, Evie. Don’t worry.”
He turned to Nicole. “My wife’s the serious type. A really smart, quality person. Doomed to go through life with a goofball for a husband.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. I’m not that serious.”
Gerald raised a finger in the air. “Notice she didn’t say I’m not a goofball.”
“How did you two meet?” Nicole asked.
“In college,” Evelyn said in a clipped tone. She would happily tell the longer story to many people, but Nicole was not one of them.
Nicole made a sad face and nodded, causing Evelyn to wonder if Teddy had already told her.
“How about you?” Gerald asked, perhaps forgetting to whom he was speaking.
Evelyn sent him a withering look, and he seemed to realize that he had gone too far. But it was too late. She held her breath.
“We met at a bar,” Nicole said happily. “At the hotel he was staying in for business. An old girlfriend of mine was staying there too, and I met her for a drink. This guy at the next table caught my eye because in the midst of a crowded bar, he was reading that boring travel magazine—you know, the one with the yellow cover and all the pictures of naked women in Africa. So I leaned over and said, ‘Excuse me, but I think my grandfather is the only other man I’ve ever seen reading that in public.’ ”
Evelyn squeezed the top of her thigh until it hurt. The next day there would be a bruise the color of a plum. She remembered last Christmas, when Julie was trying to think up an idea for a present for him. Evelyn told her she planned to get Gerald a subscription to National Geographic, and why didn’t Julie do the same for Teddy? Perhaps it would inspire their men to take them on a trip around the world.
She hated the fact that in life you could only connect the pieces after they’d been put in motion. If she hadn’t suggested the magazine, perhaps Nicole never would have noticed him.
Nicole went on. “The three of us got to talking. And eventually”—this she said with a knowing laugh—“my friend finally got a clue and made her exit. And then it was just the two of us.”
Evelyn pictured them in some dim, smoky lounge, music playing in the background, flirting and laughing and drinking, as fifteen hundred miles away Julie fixed dinner for the children and helped them finish their homework and tucked them into bed. How afterward, before turning in for the night, she had tried to call Teddy at the hotel and been told that there was no answer in his room.
“I showed him the beach, and we took a long walk,” Nicole went on.
“Do you live quite close to the beach?” Gerald asked wearily, and Evelyn could see that he was struggling now. It had been too much, even for him.
“It’s just a few minutes from our apartment,” she said. “You’ll have to come for a visit soon.”
So they were living together. Evelyn didn’t know why she should be surprised, but she was. Teddy had never said where he lived, and she had simply hoped for the best. In recent years, on a few occasions, she had run into an unmarried former student of hers, with a boyfriend or girlfriend she didn’t know. And though none of them would be so rude as to say it out loud, over the course of the conversation she would come to understand that these unmarried children shared a bed and a home, something that gave her a start every time. She had been so relieved when Teddy and Julie had the good sense to wait until after they were married, but now she supposed that the good sense had been Julie’s alone.
“Excuse me,” Evelyn said softly, as she rose from her chair. She walked off without waiting for a response, down the hallway, through the kitchen, and straight out into the backyard.
She could hear footsteps behind her, and assumed they belonged to Gerald. But when she looked back, Teddy stood there, his arms crossed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She could feel angry tears forming in her eyes. “No, I’m not okay,” she said. “How could you do this, Teddy? What were you thinking?”
He actually looked surprised. It floored her.
“Look, I didn’t go to Florida expecting to fall in love. It just happened,” he said. “What could I do about it?”
She closed her eyes tightly and without opening them said, “You could have walked away. You could have come home to your wife. You never should have let yourself be in that position in the first place.”
“I know that,” he said, his tone a bit more gentle than before. “But now that it’s happened—”
“It isn’t too late,” she said. “Truly. I know Julie has it in her heart to forgive you. And the girls need their father back. Please.”
“Mom,” he said, giving her a pitying smile. “Nicole and I are in it for the long haul. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
Evelyn stiffened. “That girl is … she’s—”
“Oh, don’t be a snob,” he said. “You don’t know how hard it is for a normal person to walk in on all this.”
As if he were a man of the people. He was the only one in the family who had never held down a real job.
“Julie gave you everything,” she said. “She gave you your children.”
“I never even wanted kids,” he said. “I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s true. No one asked me. You get married and suddenly there are all these expectations, and you’re just supposed to accept them. Now I have another chance. We want to travel, go have adventures.”
She turned and walked away from him, toward the pond. She could hear his boots crunching in the leaves, and she quickened her pace.
“Go back inside,” she shouted. “Just get away from me. You’ve lost your mind.”
He grabbed her elbow, and twisted her around so she was facing him once again.
He looked so much like Gerald had at that age. Once, Evelyn had imagined that Julie would be to Teddy what she herself had been to Gerald—she would bring out the best parts, and file away the ragged, childish edges. But now she saw that even back when Gerald was a young goofball, as he put it, he still had goodness at his core. Teddy was nothing like him, really.
“You made a vow,” she said. “ ’Til death do you part. You can’t turn your back on that.”
“Times are changing. Vows like that made a lot more sense when the average life expectancy was thirty-five.” He smiled. He was trying to make a joke.
“Julie and I had problems even before Florida. She’s a very judgmental person, if you want to know the truth.”
“What sort of problems?”
“I got in a little over my head with gambling. Nothing I couldn’t get my way out of. But she made such a thing of it.”
Evelyn thought of the money he had borrowed from Gerald just before he left. A new business venture, he had said.
“Nothing your father couldn’t get you out of, you mean,” she said. “Oh Teddy, will you ever grow up?”
“I’m grown, Mother.”
She knew it was the awful truth, yet still she said firmly, “You’re not getting a divorce,” like he was seven again and she was telling him why he must never steal candy from the store.
“Yes I am,” he said. “I met with my lawyer this morning and we’ve set the court date. It’s done.”
Evelyn felt the wind knocked out of her chest. “I see.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said.
“Are you?”
“Yes! I married Julie in the first place because I knew she was exactly the girl you’d want me to be with.”
“Oh, come off it.”
“It’s true. You don’t think I realized how much you loved her? She’s the second coming of you. Look, she’s a great person, but it was never right between us. Nicole is my other half. She might not be as pure and perfect as Julie, but neither am I. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“You are doing something so deeply wrong,” she said. “If you go through with this, I swear, you will never have peace i
n your life.”
“Sorry, but I don’t buy that.”
“Julie is devastated. Do you understand?”
“You love her more than you love me,” he said. “Admit it.”
“Fine. I love her more than I love you.”
As soon as Evelyn said it, she felt regret. Not because she hadn’t meant what she said, but because she had. If she could choose only one of them, it would be Julie. But Julie didn’t want to be chosen, not by her, not after everything Teddy had done.
“We’re leaving,” he said. He began to walk back toward the house.
“I think that’s for the best,” she said, standing in place, watching him go.
2012
Ava, May, and Olivia were having their hair done at a salon called Gabriella’s. Mona and Kate waited their turn in a pair of plastic chairs in the middle of the room. They were well into their second hour of pampering, having already gotten manicures. May had arranged the entire thing. When she’d asked Kate if she knew of any good places in the area, Kate had drawn a blank. She hadn’t gotten a manicure since her senior prom. So May looked online, and found this country beauty parlor, where Frank Sinatra played over the loudspeaker and a big-haired woman and her two daughters worked side by side, their high heels clicking on the yellow linoleum. One of the daughters, Lulu, was six months pregnant. Kate felt bad making her stay on her feet all afternoon, but Lulu said she felt fine.
Kate watched Ava, swimming in a robe that was about seven sizes too big, in a chair that left her shoes dangling three feet from the ground. Her daughter was in heaven, as Gabriella twisted what little hair she had into a braid. No one but Kate had ever cut Ava’s hair. The first time she trimmed it she had cried, watching the brown wisps fall to the floor.
“Ready for more spray?” Gabriella asked.
“Yes please,” Ava said, in a tone that made it seem like she was getting away with something, like the woman had just asked if she’d like a can of whipped cream pumped directly into her mouth.
Kate closed her eyes and tried to pretend this wasn’t happening.
Since their arrival at the salon, the lone topic worth discussing was weddings. The five of them were the only customers in the place, and the mirrored room had become like a repository of all things matrimonial.
The Engagements Page 32
