I tried to remember the last time I hadn’t felt that, even the slightest hint of that fog, and I pictured myself sitting at my desk at City Style, Kat sitting across from me, laughing. Yes, I’d felt things then—joy and passion and hope and anger and sadness—and in a life in the suburbs, a life that was supposedly perfect, somehow those things had gotten lost.
Kat was an editor at City Style now, and I knew if anyone could get me my job back, she could. I pictured taking the train down to the city every day, entering back into the city life where most people wouldn’t know or care who Will was. And it did seem like a good idea. So as I perused the pathetic fruit aisle at Acme and longed for the organic section at Whole Foods, I decided to give her a call.
“Oh, hon,” Kat said as soon as she heard my voice. “Danny and I feel just awful about the whole thing.” To her credit, she didn’t mention that we hadn’t talked in at least two months, or that the last time we had talked, things had been awkward. We’d lost some of our connection, our commonality: She was a working mom now, with two little girls to worry about, and I’d felt all my talk about the lunch club and tennis had seemed silly and mundane in comparison to what she’d had to say.
“Then come up for a visit on Sunday,” I said, almost on a whim, wanting to see her, wanting to feel something again. “I’ll make that lamb roast that you like.” As long as they selllamb roast at Acme, I silently added, guessing that they actually might not. Well, they were bound to have some kind of roast here.
She paused for a minute, as if she was really considering saying no, as if she, like the women of Deerfield, wasn’t sure if she should be seen with me anymore, but then I heard someone else talking to her in the background, and I understood that I’d misjudged her. “What time do you want us?” she asked.
Seven
Once, years ago, I told Kat that I owed her for everything. It was the night before my wedding, when Kat had taken me to a bar in the city to celebrate my last night of being single. I’d had one too many Amaretto sours, and when I said it, I’d held on to her, hugged her, and whispered it loudly into her ear. But it wasn’t just the alcohol talking—I’d really meant it. Because Kat was the one who’d set me up with Will.
I met Kat when I first started working at City Style, and we became fast friends. Then she got engaged and went on a mission to pair up everyone she knew. Her fiancé, Danny Halloway, worked at FF&G, and his best friend, Will Levenworth, seemed like the perfect person to set me up with, or so she said, again and again and again, until I agreed, if only to shut her up.
“No blind dates,” I’d kept protesting, with an air of having had so many bad ones in the past that I was jaded. The truth was, I’d only ever been on one blind date before that one, but it had been a doozy. Kelly had set me up with Dave’s friend’s brother—the guy drank so much that by the end of dinner he was slurring his words and trying to grab my breasts across the table.
“What the hell?” I said to Kelly afterward.
“How was I supposed to know he had a drinking problem?” she’d huffed. “He’s a perfectly nice guy sober.” As if the whole thing was my fault.
So I went into my date with Will with trepidation, a turtle-neck, and plenty of money for a cab home.
We went to the opening of an Italian restaurant, Il Romano, and I was supposed to be writing a review, so really it was a working dinner for me, something that made it feel less like a blind date, and not a total waste of time.
Will was early, already at the table, a little half-circle booth in the corner, when I arrived. I got a good look at him before he saw me. He was tall, with perfect, straight posture, thick brown curly hair, and, when I saw him up closer, these blue eyes that reminded me of the ocean on a perfect bright-sky day. He had broad shoulders, and a square jaw, and a really warm, infectious smile. A smile that made me feel at ease the moment that I met him.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said, when I sat down.
“Oh yeah?” I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult at first. “What did you expect?” I was medium height at five-seven, with wavy brown hair and dark green eyes. I’d always considered myself cute, though not necessarily beautiful. I worked out, and I was thin enough. My breasts were on the small side, but since I’d discovered push-up bras in high school, I’d done a nice job of disguising this.
He turned red. “I’m not sure what I expected.” He paused. “I’m not very good at this, I guess.”
I laughed. “Me neither.”
And then suddenly, I was. We both were.
After a glass of wine and an antipasto, Will started talking, about his parents, who’d both died in a car accident when he was in college; about how hard he’d worked to become partner at the firm to prove something to them, to himself.
And after two glasses of wine, I talked about my mother, for the first time in years. Though I thought about her all the time, I never talked about her. Kelly and I didn’t discuss her, except every year on her birthday and her death day. Then one of us would call the other one and say something with the word mom, a word that had become so faraway and foreign over the years that it got stuck in my throat when I tried to say it.
We talked so much that I forgot to taste the food, to write down what I was eating, to think about whether I was enjoying it, because I was enjoying him, soaking him in slowly, like a very, very expensive wine.
And the night ended back at my apartment with a bottle of expensive wine. We were sitting on my couch, talking, and drinking. And then I was leaning on him, still drinking. And then the bottle was gone, and we were kissing, pulling off each other’s clothes, so quickly and so clumsily that the top of my turtleneck split, which seemed incredibly funny to both of us.
Then we were both naked, and Will was running his hand across my stomach, down my thigh, saying it over and over again, “My God, you are so beautiful.”
He reached down and pulled a condom from his wallet, so Will. So prepared. Always planning ahead. But I didn’t stop to really think about anything then.
He barely had it on before I pulled him on top of me, not thinking that we’d just met, that I barely knew him. Only that his skin felt perfect against mine, his body just right, just absolutely right.
In the morning, I woke up naked, leaning against him on the couch, and I couldn’t remember much except that he’d called me beautiful, and that it had been the best sex of my life, drunk or not.
I’d walked into work smiling, despite the thick, dull ache in my head, the feeling that I was about to vomit. “So.” Kat was waiting for me at my desk. “How was it?”
I shrugged. “It was nice.” The understatement of the year, of course, but I wasn’t sure if it was a fluke, a one-night thing, and I didn’t want Kat going crazy over it.
She leaned in to get a closer look at me. “Shit,” she said. “You’re hungover.”
“No, I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
She wagged her finger at me. “You slept with him.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You are such a liar. Oooh,” she squealed. “I have to go call Danny.”
“Don’t you dare,” I called after her.
Two years later, Kat was my maid of honor and Danny was Will’s best man as we stood in the backyard of a historic mansion and vowed to love, honor, and cherish each other through sickness and in health. And indictment. Who would’ve thought to add that to the vows?
Even now, eight years after I first met her, Kat Neely-Halloway was a force to be reckoned with. She and Danny were the ultimate perfect power couple, and she had managed to be promoted twice in the last three years, even after birthing two little girls whom she promptly dropped into day care after only six weeks’ maternity leave each time. “Some people are cut out to take care of children,” she’d told me over lunch, on one of the rare times I’d stolen back into the city after moving to Deerfield. “I’m not one of them.” She’d puffed on her cigarette. “Hey, at least I can admit it, right?”
I’d laughed, though I couldn’t imagine doing that myself. It seemed like if I ever actually had a baby, I’d feel this innate requirement to watch her every second, to make sure nothing bad happened to her.
And now, as she sat here on my back patio, amid the grassy, sweet-smelling suburban air, dainty blond-haired Kat still struck me as something akin to a fireball. We sat in lounge chairs together, watching her girls run around my giant green yard. I watched their images stretch and fade against the sunlight, and it occurred to me that this backyard was really meant for children to run in. It always felt a little empty when I sat out here all alone.
Kat lit another cigarette. “The suburbs are shit,” she said, waving her hand in the air, letting the smoke trail out carelessly behind her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. I would’ve disagreed with her absolutely two weeks ago, gone on and on about the virtues of the quiet and the nice friendly neighbors and the lunch club. “You get used to it, I guess.”
Danny and Will were in the house, sharing beers and watching the Michigan game, Danny’s alma mater. Will had even shaved and showered for the occasion, something that had made me feel just a little hopeful.
Kat and I could care less about football, and she said she was sick of watching grown men scream at the TV like children, so we’d retreated outside.
“The girls are getting big,” I said. The last time I’d seen them they were babies, not even walking. It was just after the younger one, Arabella, was born, and Will and I had gone down to the city with a designer pink layette and stayed only an hour. And here the older one was four and attempting a cartwheel.
“It’s hard to believe,” she said, taking another drag on her cigarette. “Someday they’ll grow up and be actual people. Teenagers.” She shuddered. “Women.” Her voice trailed off. It was the first time I ever detected real pride in her voice when she spoke of her children, and I knew that underneath her tough-as-nails exterior she really did love them.
“What about you?” she asked. “I thought for sure you’d have at least one of your own by now. I mean, that’s why people move to the fucking suburbs, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Oh, I guess.” I paused. “We’ve been trying. Sort of. It just hasn’t happened yet.”
“Sort of?” She sighed. “Danny takes one look at me and I get pregnant. It’s like a fertility nightmare in our house.”
I laughed. “That’s not what most people would consider a fertility nightmare.” I hadn’t really thought much about my own fertility. I’d just assumed if I got pregnant, I did. And if I didn’t, I didn’t. I didn’t see my life as eminently good or bad based on whether I could have a baby, though I knew Will didn’t agree.
We were both quiet for a minute, watching the girls run around, doing twirls, dancing on the grass. “Look,” Kat said quietly, “I can’t get you your old job back.” I was astounded by the way she could read me, even after the way we’d lost touch in the past few years. “Things are tight, and Hank thinks your replacement shits gold.” Hank was the managing editor of the magazine, a wiry uptight guy who always looked nervous.
“Kat,” I said, “I don’t even know if I’d want my old job back.” Though I felt a little disappointed even as I said it. Without it, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself, how I was going to feel something again.
She frowned. “I can get you something. Maybe a little freelance work.” She paused. “But you’ll have to go back to your old byline.”
“You’ve already asked Hank?”
She shrugged but didn’t answer. “Danny should’ve been able to do something more. I mean, what kind of a fucking lawyer is he anyway?”
“It’s not Danny’s fault,” I said.
“So you’ll do it?”
Jennifer Daniels. It had been a while since I’d thought of myself as anything other than Jennifer Levenworth, and just thinking of my maiden name, my old byline, made me more than a little nostalgic for my old life, for the days when Kat and I had sat around drinking coffee and exchanging answers in the Times puzzle over e-mail, while Hank thought we were hard at work on our latest assignments. “I’ll do it,” I said.
She smiled. “Great. Come down to the office next week, and I’ll get you hooked up.”
Later that night, after Danny, Kat, and the kids were gone, Will was in his study and I sat at the kitchen table wondering what kind of freelance work I was going to get. What would I—or Jennifer Daniels—be contributing to the magazine? I knew it would probably be shit. Hank gave all the good stuff to the full-time staffers. But I felt a little excited about it all the same.
Around ten o’clock Will walked out of his study. “I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Okay.” I stood up and pretended to be attending to the dishes, thinking that if only Will came over and helped me, his hand might brush against mine, and then I could lean into him and feel something again, any little bit at all of what I’d felt that first night we were ever together. But he walked toward the doorway, and I sighed. “I’ll be up in a little while.”
“Jen, I …” He paused for a minute. “Dave offered me a job.”
“Oh?” I feigned surprise. “Doing what?”
“Sales,” he said. “Weed control packages, lawn services, that sort of thing, I guess.” I didn’t look up because I didn’t want to see the look on his face, the way this new job, this new profession would utterly fail to define him the way his old one had. “I start tomorrow,” he said, his words sounding small and far away, as if he were shouting at me through a tube in the distance.
“Okay.” I nodded, still unable to look at him. I didn’t want to see it in his face, the way he knew, the way we both knew, that it was so much less than okay.
By the time I got into bed, Will was asleep, and I lay there in the darkness, thinking about Kat. About the way she’d looked at her girls, the way she actually loved them underneath, even though it didn’t always seem that way on the surface. And then I thought, why had we ever left the city? What had we been thinking to come to Deerfield?
I was sitting at a table, holding on to a latte with one hand, a cigarette with the other. I took a puff of the cigarette.
“Hey,” I said with a voice that was not my own, to the guy who sat down next to me. He was tall and blond, muscular, in his twenties. But his face was blurry, and I couldn’t place him.
“Katrin, you smell great. “
“Thank you,” I said. It was the perfume. The perfume Danny gave me five years ago, that I hadn’t worn since before the girls were born, since the days before spit-up and pee accidents. The perfume of lavender and rose hips.
I felt his foot underneath the table tap mine lightly, just enough to brush it, maybe accidentally. Or maybe not. Just enough to cause a tingle in my leg that traveled up straight through the center of my body, an electricity, an urgency, that I couldn’t ever remember feeling, though I must have, once.
“I admire your work so much,” he said. My work. I was still thinking about his foot, the tingling in my leg. I would totally fuck you, I thought. If you ask. All you have to do is ask. Please ask.
Eight
Will woke me up at seven with a kiss on the forehead. My dream, Kat, still felt right there, right within my grasp. I would totally fuck you. I opened my eyes, and Will’s looming face startled me.
“Jen,” he whispered. “What should I wear?”
“What?” I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head. It took me a moment to remember that I was not Kat, but Jen, and that Will was not a sexy guy in a coffee shop whose image I couldn’t even conjure now that I was awake, but my husband, who looked tired and worried and sad, and not at all in the mood to have sex.
“To, um, work,” he said. “What should I wear to work?” I groaned and pulled myself out of bed, rubbing sleep, the dream, away from my eyes.
Will’s closet was filled with dark expensive suits, pressed cotton shirts, and tie racks. Then off to the side were his golf
clothes, khaki pants, and collared shirts. I picked out a pair of khakis and a navy golf shirt and handed them to him. “This?” he said. “Are you sure?”
It was such a contrast to the formal suits I was used to seeing him wear to work, but it was what my dad had always worn to work, and the kind of outfit I’d seen Dave in from time to time, so I nodded.
“Sorry I woke you up,” he said.
“That’s okay.” I shook my head, unable to shake away the dream, the feeling of wanting something, someone, so badly. “I should get the day started anyway.”
“What are you up to today?” It was a simple enough question, but one he hadn’t asked of me for a long time, maybe the whole time we’d lived in Deerfield, so it caught me off guard for a minute.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I may go into the city and see Kat. She said they might have some work for me. Freelance stuff.”
He nodded and then kissed the top of my head. As he leaned in toward me, the smell of his pine aftershave invaded all my senses, and made the tingling in my legs from the dream return. I put my hand on his shoulder, and his skin felt smooth and warm from the shower. I would totally fuck you, I thought, and then felt almost alarmed by the sound of Kat’s voice, Kat’s words in my head. “I better get dressed,” he said, pulling away. “I don’t want to be late.”
“Do you want some coffee?” I asked, unwilling to let him, to let the moment go. “I’m going to make some.”
He met my eyes and smiled, and it looked like a real smile, the kind of smile you could see in his whole face, in the crinkly lines around his perfect blue eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Coffee would be great.”
The Transformation of Things Page 5
