“I wasn’t going to say that,” I said. And truthfully, it hadn’t occurred to me that there was anything wrong with letting the TV distract him. Jack loved The Wiggles—it seemed like he was watching it every time I was over, and it always seemed to put him in a trance. Toddler drug of choice, Will had suggested once, watching as Jack and Caleb’s eyes had both glazed over, as they’d cocked their heads to the side and held their mouths open.
She sighed. “Of course you weren’t,” she said, as if I was the bad guy.
Ten minutes later the house was stunningly quiet, except for music coming from the TV and, occasionally, Jack’s almost girly-sounding voice echoing along. “Your hair is short,” Kelly said, as she walked into the kitchen.
“I know.” I nodded.
She reached up and felt the ends. “But I think it’ll grow on me.” I shrugged; I hadn’t decided yet.
Kelly put up a pot of coffee and then unwrapped a few Tastykakes and put them on a plate. It amazed me to watch her, the way every motion seemed exactly right, exactly momlike, as if she’d molded herself perfectly to fit into this world, this life. I supposed it must have been the way I’d looked on the tennis court, at the club, or announcing winners at the charity auction, but I wondered, if I had stood back and watched myself, the way I was watching her now, if I would’ve looked this at ease.
“Dave said Will has been doing well,” she said.
“Yes,” I murmured, though really, Will hadn’t said a word to me about work, or about anything, for that matter.
“So tell me, how are you handling things?” Kelly asked, plunking the plate of Jelly Krimpets down in front of me. I told her about Lisa coming over with the pineapple upside-down cake and booting me out of my life. She chewed on her Jelly Krimpet and nodded. “Bitches,” she said. She waved her hand. “You’re better off without them.” I tried to ignore the I-told-you-so look she flashed at me, something almost close to a smirk. “So what are you going to do now?”
“Kat got me a little freelance work.” I left out what it was so she wouldn’t roll her eyes or laugh at me, or point out what I already knew, that it was really just glorified typing.
“So you want to go back to work?” She paused. “That’s not what I expected.”
“You were the one who asked if I was going back to work,” I pointed out, which was typical. I could never win with Kelly. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I thought you might have a baby.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute or so, and then I said, “Well, anyway.” I stared at the Tastykakes longingly, trying to mentally calculate how long it had been since I’d eaten something like that. Two years. Maybe three. “This would be the worst possible time for us to have a baby.”
Kelly nodded. “There’s never really a good time,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to jump in and do it.” She paused. “Like Dave always says, ‘Shit happens, but flowers grow really well in shit.’”
“Is that like some kind of a landscaping joke?” I asked,finally picking up the Jelly Krimpet and stuffing it in my mouth, letting the sweet, sweet jelly dull her questions. Why had I thought it would be a good idea to come over here?
“And what happened to your novel?” she drilled.
I finished chewing and shrugged. I didn’t want to tell her the truth, that I’d never even gotten past the first chapter before I’d tucked it away in a drawer, and that I rarely ever thought about taking it out again. “How’s your project coming?” I asked, wanting to change the subject, to take the heat off me.
“Good,” she said. “I’m doing flowers, for a calendar.”
I looked around at Kelly’s photos—the one aspect of her house that made it seem grown up—the black-and-white landscapes on the walls. I examined the one that hung by the fridge, a close-up of a saguaro cactus from a trip they’d taken to Arizona the year before. It was so close that the individual needles looked like fingers, reaching out for something. Her photos really were beautiful, and it amazed me that somehow she managed it all: mom, wife, artist.
“Oh, by the way, I talked to Dad. He and Sharon are coming for Thanksgiving.” I thought about the last time I saw my father and Sharon, last Passover. We’d hardly said two words to each other the whole night. Part of it was because he had never shown anything but disappointment for me, and the other part was Sharon, who was either unable or unwilling to shut up. She’d barely step foot inside Kelly’s house before she’d be criticizing everything and everyone in her path. But even worse, she pretended to do it in a nice enough way, as if she was actually paying us some kind of backward compliment.
Last Passover, she’d started in with “The dinner looks lovely, Kel.” She’d wrinkled her long, pointy nose. “Now if only you could’ve dressed up a little more. Put on some makeup. You’re too pale without it. And Jenny, oy God, you’re too thin. Look at that waistline, Donny. You need to borrow a little from the middle of your sister, eh?” My dad—Don—to everyone but her—looked away, uncomfortable, not wanting to meet our gazes or stare at our waistlines either.
Dave had come up behind Kelly and put his arms around her. “Her middle is perfect. You can’t have any.” He looked at me and laughed, while Kelly blushed.
Kelly probably could afford to lose a little weight, but Hannah was only now just turning one, and Kelly said that with each child those last ten pounds became harder and harder to budge.
I liked my middle just the way it was—strong from Pilates and small from avoiding carbs for the last three years—despite the fact that Will hadn’t said anything in my defense. He’d just stood there, holding on to a jar of gefilte fish that Kelly had put him in charge of, looking sort of dumbstruck, the way he always was by my family.
“Anyway,” I heard Kelly saying now, and I knew I’d missed what she’d just been saying about our father, “it’ll be nice to see him.”
“Does he know?” I asked quietly. I hadn’t talked to him since I’d called him for his birthday back in early August, and even if I had, Will’s indictment wouldn’t have been first on my list of topics.
She shrugged. “I didn’t tell him.” She paused. “But you should, Jen. He’s bound to find out anyway.”
I pictured Sharon’s face contorting, her big nose seeming even bigger as she scrunched her face up in a frown and whispered to my father, “I never liked that one. But you know Jen, she’s not too bad-looking, but she’s not a real good judge of character.”
“You’re right,” I finally said. But I had no intention of talking to my father, much less telling him anything about Will.
Eleven
When I returned home, it was nearly dark, but our house was lit up and oddly alive-looking. I hadn’t given one thought to dinner, and there was no way we were going for a quick meal at the club.
Judge Will never arrived home before eight, sometimes nine. I’d have dinner done at seven-thirty, and I was used to eating it by myself, then keeping it warm in the oven for him.
But when I walked inside, landscaping salesman Will was standing in the kitchen, amid a mess of pots and dishes, food boxes and cooking utensils. “Hi,” he said. “I made us some spaghetti. And salad.”
I stood there, my mouth wide open, not quite sure what to say. Will hadn’t cooked for me since, well, ever. He always joked that he could make a mean anything-the-hell-I-wanted-off-a-take-out-menu. So I decided not to mention that I hadn’t eaten pasta in something like three years. Plus I’d already given in to the Tastykake, so the day was shot. “It smells great,” I said, which was the truth.
He looked up from the stove and walked toward me. “You cut your hair,” he said.
I nodded. “Do you like it?”
He reached up and touched the ends lightly with his fingers. “You look different,” he said.
I stared back at him, at his khaki pants and his dark brown collared shirt, at the way his face seemed softer, and his hair was a little longer, more unruly, and I realized he
looked different, too. But I liked it.
“Here.” He pulled out a mahogany chair for me. “Have a seat.”
I watched him move around the kitchen. He stumbled. The pasta water foamed over and started smoking up the stove, the garlic bread began to burn; he spilled some sauce on the floor. “Do you want some help?” I kept saying.
“No, no.” He brushed me off. “I’ve got it all under control.” So all I did was watch this person, this man, my husband, who was something more of a stranger right here in front of me than he had been a few weeks ago. Yet as I watched him, clumsy and trying so hard, I felt my heart beat a little faster, felt this warmth in my brain like I’d had a little too much wine even though I hadn’t had anything to drink yet.
When the food was finished he put it all on the table, and then he placed a heaping pile of everything on my plate. “It looks delicious,” I said, and I smiled at him. “You really didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to,” he said. “I mean, isn’t that what husbands are supposed to do when they get home early?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” And really, I didn’t. None of my so-called friends’ husbands got home early, and even Dave worked long hours, so what did I have to compare it to? He sat down, leaned back in the chair, and smiled as I started eating. “You seem happy,” I said, between bites.
“I made my first sale today.”
“Congratulations.” I smiled at him. “That was fast.” I felt bad that it hadn’t occurred to me before that Will might actually be good at this job. And why wouldn’t he be? He was smart and handsome and well-spoken. I would’ve bought something from him if he’d shown up at my door before we met.
“I know.” He nodded. “It was.” He chewed carefully, as if trying to piece out what he wanted to say next exactly right. “Maybe I got confused over the past few years, hell, I don’t know, forever. About what was really important to me.” He put his hand on my arm. His fingers were warm, and I closed my eyes and imagined them on my waist, pulling me toward him, pulling me closer.
“You were a judge,” I whispered, opening my eyes. “That was important to you.”
“Shit, Jen, I don’t know.” He pulled his hand away and held up his wineglass. “Anyway,” he said, “I made a sale. Life goes on.” He clinked his glass to mine, and then swallowed it all down before pouring himself some more. I took a sip of mine. “You know,” he said, when he finished the wine, “this is nice.” He reached for my hand.
“This is nice,” I repeated. I thought about all those times when all I wanted was Will to pay attention to me, Will to stop working and get out of his study and want to be with me. And now here he was, doing and saying all the right things. Yet I could see it in the way his face was stretched and tight and tired, in the way he’d drunk his wine too fast: Underneath, he wasn’t happy here with me, with me and nothing else.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
“Oh, Will, I don’t hate you.” I stared into his blue-sea eyes, a little glassy from too much wine, and I knew that I could never hate him. But I felt this oddly terrifying sorrow for him: His career had defined him, everything about him, and now, I knew, he was going to have to figure out who he was, who we were, without it. Sale or no.
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s very good.” He paused. “I don’t want to lose you.” The sound of his voice faded and dropped, as if he was whispering from the next room, and I suddenly had to strain to hear him. Still, the words rang softly in my ears: I don’t want to lose you.
I wanted to say something back, but I was overwhelmed so all I could do was nod. I wanted all of it back, that life we’d had once, that life of laughter and passionate sex and good conversation. That life of being happy. Together. But I wondered if happiness was something you could find again, once you’d lost it, or if, after it was gone, there was no way to really erase all the things that had made it disappear in the first place.
“I know,” he said. “I know.” As if he really did know, as if he could tell what I was thinking. He touched the ends of my new, shorter hair. “I like it,” he said. “It highlights your face.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I do.” He moved his hand down, so it covered mine, and then we sat there like that for a while, eating in silence. I wondered, if my neighbors were watching, if they’d be able to see it, the way, as the two of us shared our dinner at the kitchen table, the inside of our house had become just a little more illuminated.
* * *
After dinner Will retreated into his study. As I scrubbed saucy splotches off the counter I wondered what exactly he was doing in there, and why he still went in there every night. I didn’t think he was working. But maybe it was a habit that was hard to break, the one thing from his old life that he couldn’t let go of, that space of cherrywood and beige damask, that space that was completely and uniquely his. Or maybe it was just his way of getting away from me, of getting away from the awkwardness that might bloom in the space of an entire evening alone together. I don’t want to lose you. And yet it felt so hard to find your way back to someone once you’d lost your way.
For a moment I wished I could go back in time, to when Will first told me he wanted to be a judge, just before we moved to Deerfield.
“I don’t have to run,” he’d said then, “not if you don’t want me to.” I saw it in his eyes, the way he wanted to, the way he silently pleaded with me to say yes. And I instantly knew if I said no that he might resent me for it, that I would be the one who’d stopped him from becoming someone great, something spectacular.
So I’d shrugged, turned away, and said, “You should do it. It’s a great opportunity for you.”
“Are you sure?” I could hear just the smallest lilt of excitement in his voice, the anticipation of a child. “It might be longer hours,” he said. “More work.”
I’d nodded, even though I’d been thinking that I really didn’t want him to, that I hoped he wouldn’t, that I wanted him here, with me. I stared at him and willed him to know what I was thinking, though even as I thought it, it seemed selfish. Life was short—this much I knew, and who was I to keep him from doing the one thing that was going to make him happy? So I pasted on a smile and gave him a hug. “You’re going to be a judge,” I’d said. “I’m so proud of you.”
I finished the dishes and went upstairs, where I swallowed my herbs, brushed my teeth, and slipped under the covers. I thought about Will, about how I’d lied so he wouldn’t end up resenting me someday. But lying there in bed, alone, Will still downstairs in his study, I thought, just before I drifted off to sleep, that maybe I was the one who’d ended up resenting him.
I was sitting at a desk, wearing Will’s black judge’s robe. I looked around. Will’s chambers. Sitting in front of me was an appointment book, and I looked down and saw the name Jude Marris, circled in red.
I closed my eyes, and I felt the nausea rise and swell in my stomach, a ripple of anxiety that overtook me, until the bile rose so fast in my throat that there wasn’t enough warning, no way to stop it from coming.
I quickly reached under the desk for the trash can, put my head down, and threw up.
I heard a knock at the door. Janice poked her head in. “Judge, Mr. Marris is here. “
I nodded and wiped the sweat from my brow.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course. Just give me a few minutes. Okay?”
I waited for Janice to close the door before I grabbed the trash can and felt the rest of my lunch coming back up.
When I woke up in the morning, Will was already gone, and I realized I must have slept late. I rolled over and grabbed his pillow and clung to it; it smelled faintly of pine trees and fabric softener. And then as I lay there, I wondered exactly what my dream had meant. What had my subconscious been trying to tell me?
I got up and got undressed to get in the shower, but I paused for a minute i
n front of the mirror, trying to size up my naked reflection objectively. I was still fairly thin, flatchested, and getting a little cellulite on my upper thighs, but not bad for thirty-three. I ran my hand across my stomach, which was still smoother than satin despite the fact that I’d put on a few pounds in the last few weeks. I’d seen Kelly’s stomach—wrinkly and pocked with stretch marks that made the skin gray and sag, and look like skin fitting for an eighty-year-old, not a thirty-six-year-old. “No more bikinis for me,” she’d sighed.
I pinched a little bit of fat near my hips. That’s what giving up Pilates and tennis, and giving in to carbs again, all at once, would do to a girl. Somehow, my morning jog wasn’t making up for it.
All the women in the lunch club were thin—except Lisa, who was always struggling to try to get thin. But even she wasn’t fat by any standard. I’d heard Bethany moan about having a twenty-five-inch waist, and Amber talk about doing four hundred sit-ups a day. And one time when Helen Kemper was going through chemo, and super-super skinny (I hadn’t known her before so it was hard to say how much skinnier exactly), I’d heard Bethany compliment her, tell her she looked just like a model. “Yeah. Fantastic new diet,” Helen said, and I detected the edge of sarcasm to her voice, even though I’d never really known her.
“Why?” Lisa threw her hands up in the air once in the locker room. “What’s it all for anyway?” She was frustrated at not having lost weight after a week on the maple syrup cleanse diet.
“Oh, sweetie,” Bethany said. “We have to stay thin and pretty or our husbands will find wives who will.”
I’d seen a flicker of something, maybe fear or maybe annoyance, flash across Lisa’s face before she’d turned to me and rolled her eyes.
I’d shrugged. I wasn’t staying thin because I was worried Will would leave me for someone else. Because, in fact, he’d already left me, in a way, for something else. His career. And I always thought if I stayed thin and fit and pretty, well then at least I couldn’t assign myself any blame. At least it couldn’t be my fault.
The Transformation of Things Page 7
