Property

by Lionel Shriver

  “Oh,” Weston said lightly. “You know me, I’m moody.”

  Jillian inevitably contemplated the matter, and would have liked to have been happier, which wasn’t the same as being happy. But then, while many people are overjoyed when they decide to get married themselves, it’s hardly normal practice to hoot and sing hallelujah when someone else does. Understandably, too, Baba’s new circumstances underscored her own—she hadn’t even dated for over a year—and thus his announcement moved her to feel a tad pensive, a degree more concerned that she for one was destined to remain single. Worse things could happen, of course. Having proved in Jillian’s experience more durable than romance, friendship often provided a form of companionship as good as marriage, if not better.

  When she scrutinized herself—which made her feel like Baba—she didn’t appear to feel doleful or pissed off or excluded, because she was already integrated into Paige and Baba’s social life. Paige was already acclimated to her boyfriend’s amity with an old college classmate, which had lasted his adulthood through. So there was no reason that anything would change after a wedding. Apart from a possible honeymoon, it would be back to tennis and a musing debrief thrice a week, punctuated by twosome, threesome, and several-some dinners, liberally lubricated with libation.

  Any self-interested consternation that Baba was taking himself off the market would be irrational. Back in the day, they had each had opportunity to pursue the other as marriageable material, and they had each walked away. The two of them as an item were not meant to be. What was meant to be was exactly what they were. In fact, in the more recent go-round, Jillian had been the one who’d cut it off, and she could never bear women who got huffy when other women picked up their discards. You either wanted a guy or you didn’t. If you didn’t, it made no more sense to get retroactively possessive than it did to become incensed that a neighbor was walking around in a shirt that you’d donated to the Salvation Army.

  Yet the following several weeks felt indefinably out of kilter. If this summer were a bed, it would be rumpled and unmade. Baba canceled tennis dates more often than he once did (that is, he canceled at all). Shit happens, and she’d overlooked his being late that afternoon in May when he delivered the perplexingly leaden report of his proposal. But the tardiness grew chronic. She’d wait around for twenty minutes, fidgeting in anxiety that they’d lose no. 3—their favorite, if only for being customary—because a lone player couldn’t hold a court. By the time Baba finally showed up, Jillian would have grown cross, which meant playing in a humor at odds with the buoyant spirit of the whole endeavor.

  This was the summer, too, that she developed an odd glitch in her forehand follow-through—a destructive crook of the wrist as the ball left the strings that hooked the shot to the net. One of the commonalities that suited them to each other on court was a tendency to exasperation with the shortcomings of their own games and an inexhaustible patience in relation to the other’s frustrations. So Jillian would have expected to grow provoked by the spastic innovation herself, but not for Baba to find it just as infuriating.

  “You should really consider taking a few lessons,” he announced testily on a water break. “Iron it out.”

  She was nonplussed. “Since when do we take lessons?”

  “A little humility goes a long way in this sport, and a few sessions with a professional can be invaluable. I’m sure you could find a coach at Washington and Lee who moonlights. And it’s not that expensive. If you don’t think you can afford it, you can always go back to leading those tourist walkabouts around Lexington landmarks.”

  He knew full well she’d given up that part-time job because they weren’t accommodating about releasing her on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.

  “But I know what I’m doing wrong,” she said. “I just can’t seem to stop.”

  “When I know I’m doing something wrong,” he said tightly, “I stop.”

  Most disconcerting was Baba’s new reluctance to linger after a session. There was always an appointment, or he’d promised to have an early dinner with Paige. Was he trying to establish some new protocol now that he was getting hitched? Meanwhile, Jillian had issued a routine dinner invitation to the couple—she reminded Baba that his fiancée had still not seen the Standing Chandelier, about which so far other friends had been spectacularly enthusiastic—but those two could never arrive at a date. She knew he’d come to cast a wider social net with Paige—all to the good, since in times past, tennis aside, unless Jillian hauled him through the door, he was capable of spending weeks on end holed up with a computer—but she hadn’t thought he’d become one of those gadflies out and about every night. Hard to arrange anyway, in a town of eight thousand people.

  She’d have understood his being busy and distracted if he and Paige were in the process of planning a massive wedding. But the event on August twenty-sixth was meant to be modest. The invitations apparently went out by email to a guest list of under fifty (Jillian was surprised they could even marshal these dozens of well-wishers when Baba had long been such a hermit, but then everyone had cousins). They were eschewing the catered cakes, goodie bags, and hired DJs of the marriage-industrial complex for a simple ceremony followed by a potluck picnic. That night, to make the day more of an occasion for out-of-towners, they’d have a party with drinks and snacks back at the A-frame, with music streamed from Baba’s Mac. About all that would have been taking up her tennis partner’s time was putting together the playlist.

  Jillian had offered to ask the Chevaliers if they’d be open to letting the picnic take place on their grounds. In August, the estate’s owners would be down in Byron Bay, Australia, and she was sure that they’d happily grant permission so long as everyone cleaned up after. The hills were rolling, the lawn luscious. It would be so much more private than the Boxerwood Nature Center, and not as impersonal as the Golf and Country Club, which would charge an arm and a leg—

  “Jordan’s Point Park,” he cut her off. “It’s pretty, it’s public, and it doesn’t involve easily offended rich people. But thanks anyway.”

  He didn’t sound very thankful. “Okay, never mind, then.”

  By the fourth week of July, Jillian’s follow-through glitch was worse than ever, losing her every third point or so. Constant apologizing made her meek, and meekness weakened her strokes, when one of the aspects of her game that Baba had always relished was that she gave as good as she got. She was playing like a girl. She was playing like a girl who sucked. Tennis was a hard enough sport without the additional burden of worrying that your partner was bored or otherwise not having a good time. And he was not having a good time—or at least that’s what it looked like from the other side of the net that Friday, when he started losing numerous points from his own unforced errors, his motions phlegmatic, as if he couldn’t be bothered to chase her dreary little shots. Careful not to seem pouty or petulant or weepy and instead making a matter-of-fact and indisputable observation that this wasn’t working, Jillian suggested as they gathered balls at the net that they call it quits prematurely. It was the first time in twenty-five years that they’d curtailed their play in the absence of rain, dark, injury, or hail.

  With the half hour’s early retirement, for once Baba couldn’t claim that he had to rush off elsewhere.

  “Sorry,” she said again on the bench. Though it must have been ninety degrees, so frequently had she futzed up that she’d barely worked up a sweat. “Maybe I should take those lessons.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, staring glassily straight ahead. He didn’t seem very attached to the advice anymore.

  When neither said anything for a couple of minutes, there was none of the serenity that usually characterized their silence. It was awkward. Awkward the way it would have been with just anyone.

  “Baba.” She took a breath. “Is there some reason that you and Paige can never find a single free evening to come to the cottage for dinner?”

  “We have been pretty busy. But,” he added, “it’s
possible I feel protective.”

  “How’s that?”

  Kneading his knees, he seemed to struggle with and overcome some impulse, and then to proceed in a spirit of grim resolution. “Well, face it, Frisk. As for the whole getting-married thing, you haven’t exactly been on board.”

  “How can you say that? I think it’s great! I think Paige is great! I think you make a great couple! One of those—unpredictable couples. Who might not be spit out as checking all the boxes on Match dot com, but who make a more interesting combination as a consequence of being unlikely.”

  “Is that a tortured way of telling me that you think Paige and I are a bad fit?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant, and not what I said, either. What’s with you? I swear, all summer you’ve been so out of sorts! Constantly taking things the wrong way. Being grumpy and distant. Ever since—”

  “That’s right, ever since. Is this another plea to get me to call off the wedding?”

  “When have I ever—”

  “When have you not? It was obvious when I first told you we were getting married that you opposed the idea, and were hoping to talk me out of it. I don’t know what your problem is with Paige—”

  “I don’t have a problem with Paige.” He wouldn’t look at her, so she leaned into his lap until he met her gaze. “I don’t. I like her. We have a few negligible differences of opinion. I don’t mind wearing a beat-up, used fur coat to keep warm. I could never give up veal chops. I’m of two minds about fracking because Virginia needs the money and I like the idea of energy independence, but that argument was stupid because I don’t actually care that much one way or the other. What’s important is she’s honest, and sincere, and genuine, and forthright. She’s nice-looking, she’s obviously loyal, and she must be pretty smart if she went to Middlebury, though I like the fact she doesn’t show off how much she knows. She’s got a way bigger social conscience than I do.”

  Somehow the more Jillian piled on the compliments, the hollower they sounded, which drove her to pile on still more. “There’s something disarming about her—something vulnerable and unguarded, so I guess I understand your impulse to ‘protect’ her, but she doesn’t need protection from me. Why should she, when she’s been nothing but nice to me, to a point where I’ve almost been embarrassed—giving me that fringed shawl she found in Lynchburg, or the fig preserves from the Wine and Music Festival? Never mind if a present isn’t all that expensive, it’s the gesture. Thinking of me, even when I’m not there, and making a good guess as to what I might like. She’s never seemed wary or territorial, despite the fact that you and I are so close. Which is pretty amazing, actually.”

  Throughout this panegyric touting the many fine qualities of his wife-to-be, Baba looked only the more miserable.

  “Or we used to be close,” Jillian added, sitting back.

  “See?” Baba pounced. “That’s what I mean. That kind of cutting aside, which says it all.”

  “Oh, all what? I’m very, very glad you’ve found someone. I don’t know how to spell it out more plainly. Because what I appreciate most about Paige is that she loves you. It’s obvious every time she looks at you. In fact, there are times she can’t even bear to look at you, because it’s too much, it makes her feel too much. Why wouldn’t I want that for you?”

  “That’s what I ask myself,” Baba said.

  “I’m sorry if I didn’t burst into tears of joy, or whatever you hoped for when you told me. You seemed in a terrible frame of mind, like someone had died or something, and I was trying to understand why, not ‘talk you out of’ getting married.”

  Yet the further she extolled his fiancée’s merits, the more Jillian was reminded of that feeling in the presence of a woman who detested her: that no matter what she said, she was digging her own grave.

  Once back home, Jillian showered and put her feet up with a glass of wine in the glow of the chandelier. She considered whether the problem wasn’t talk itself, with its deserved reputation as cheap. She could blah-blah herself blue in the face, and Baba would never be sure that she wasn’t merely mouthing what he wanted to hear. That very afternoon, hadn’t Jillian sung the praises of the gesture, which spoke so much more forcefully than words? Perhaps in this case a gesture of larger proportions than a jar of fig preserves.

  When the ideal course of action presented itself, she felt a twinge, like a stitch in the side—which is how she could tell it was right. A grand gesture should cost you. The agonizing back and forth on a second glass of Chablis was self-theater. She had already made up her mind, and by the third glass had moved from fraudulent indecision to the early stages of mourning. Baba would believe that she was thrilled he was marrying Paige Myer only when he saw how much she was willing to surrender to make the point.

  Packaging up that weekend was anxiety provoking, and required half a roll of six-foot Bubble Wrap and a full roll of packing tape. When tennis was rained out that Monday, Jillian was relieved; neither her game nor her friendship with Baba was going to settle until her alleged antagonism toward his impending nuptials was conclusively demonstrated to be all in his head. Though she didn’t want him to feel ashamed of himself. She wanted him to be touched. Cancel that; she wanted them both to be touched.

  On Tuesday, the weather cleared. After the Chevaliers’ gardener, Lance, had finished for the day, he generously agreed to provide the services of his van. So extravagantly had Jillian wrapped her offering that, even with both of them manipulating the monster wad of pillowy plastic, it barely fit through the back doors. Lance drove, while she stayed in back to ensure their cargo didn’t rock, and he was equally sweet about helping her unload. “I didn’t go to this much trouble for me and my wife’s twenty-fifth!” he said, pulling on the bundle’s back end. “That sixty-inch Sony flat screen was a box of safety matches in comparison. Whoever these folks are, sweetie, you sure must like ’em.”

  “Yeah, that’s the message, all right,” Jillian said. It wasn’t all that heavy with the two of them, but it was unwieldy, and got stuck again as she shoved it from behind. “Careful!” she cried. “Don’t put any pressure on it. Let’s just ease it back and forth.”

  She hadn’t given Baba a heads-up about her visit, lest he be driven to “protect” his fiancée from her fearsome disapproval. Besides which, you didn’t give fair warning about a surprise; that was what made it a surprise. It was barely seven thirty p.m., still light, and Baba’s Escort was in the drive.

  “Where you wanna carry this, missy?” Lance asked, once the bundle had cleared the van’s doors.

  Dismally, Jillian appraised the A-frame’s entrance. If her delivery jammed between the roof and floor of the van, it wasn’t going to fit through the front door. “I’m afraid that to get it inside, I’ll have to unwind the outside layers. If you keep it steady upright, I’ll start slicing tape. Fortunately, I brought an X-Acto knife.”

  This was poor dramatics. She had hoped to make the present look less like a lifetime supply of plastic wrap by belting it with the red ribbon tucked in her shorts pocket. But it was too late for the flourish, because their commotion had already drawn Baba to the door.

  In the middle of his front lawn, she was in the midst of walking another layer off the wad, which with all the packaging stood eight feet tall. To keep from having to feed the accumulating Bubble Wrap between Lance and the bale, she’d sliced off a couple of sections, now fluffing in the breeze and trashing up the yard. As Baba emerged onto the porch, she had to chase after one of the rectangles to keep it from blowing away.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, with an expression she couldn’t read. If he knew what the object was, he gave no indication, but he might readily have guessed had he applied himself.

  She smiled shyly, arms full of plastic. “It’s your wedding present. I think I can get it through the door now. Want to help?”

  The two men helped negotiate the slimmer but more fragile bundle, while Jillian, who was familiar with which bumps were the most delica
te, directed its orientation. Once in the living room, she had them rest it on one side so that she could go at the bottom with the X-Acto knife, cutting away the packaging until she revealed the metal base. She’d been so busy with the logistics that it was only then that she looked up to meet Baba’s gaze, though he had to have surmised some time before what they were unwrapping. His smile was warm enough, but also colored by a wan quality.

  “Are you sure you want to give this away?” he asked quietly.

  “To just anybody, no. To you—to you and Paige—sure as shootin’.”

  “But that thing took you six months.”

  “Longer. But if it didn’t mean anything to me, it wouldn’t be a good present.”

  They raised the new addition to Weston Babansky’s already eclectic decor to its upright position, and with the base unpacked it was stable. Jillian assured Lance that she could take it from here, thanked him effusively, and wished him good-night. Yet it was several more minutes before Paige finally emerged from downstairs, carrying a basket of clean laundry. Had Jillian heard visitors muffling overhead, while the scraping of an obscure object penetrated the ceiling of her utility room, curiosity would have gotten the better of her sooner. Some women had a vigilant relationship to a load in the dryer.