Perhaps even more pathetically, when Nick slid into bed beside her, to him Emma feigned sleep, while to herself she pretended that everything was just as it had been. The rain struck like a machine gun against the glass and the wind howled like a tortured animal. The part of Emma that she deemed her common sense understood that the only way to survive the night was to push from her mind all that she’d discovered, to instead focus on how nice it was to lie skin to skin against her boyfriend, to feel his chest pressed into her back and his arms around her waist as permission to slip into a deep sleep.
There was no question of going outside the next day. The four of them were housebound, watching the whipping wind and rain through fogged windows, listening to the disaster coverage on the radio, and sipping mimosas. Annie made a show of declaring the champagne delicious, which at this point was only for Nick’s sake; with great restraint Emma resisted rolling her eyes, and instead kept topping off her drink.
Never in her life had Emma felt more anxious. There was the storm news—the power had already gone out in parts of Brooklyn, including Red Hook, where trees were down and streets were fast flooding—plus the Annie news, and of course the news of whatever the hell had happened or maybe was still happening between Nick and Gen. Emma had done all she could to avoid the storm, camping out in this apartment on the twenty-sixth floor, and now she tried to avoid her boyfriend and friend, too, sequestering herself in the guest room supposedly to work, then offering to make lunch when the rest of them hit up the building’s gym. While she spread eight pieces of spelt bread with some kind of designer Dijon, Emma spun scenarios in her head—Nick and Gen had been sleeping together for years, laughing at Emma’s naïveté during their steamy trysts; or they’d only recently realized their deep love for each other and, pitying Emma, were trying to find a gentle way to let her down; or Nick, desperate to escape buzz-kill Emma who was forcing him into cohabitation, had run into the arms of fun-loving Gen for relief and commiseration, and now was plotting how to weasel his way out of their new lease.
When this line of thought became too overwhelming, Emma moved on to Annie. She conjured up every stereotype of new moms, picturing Annie’s designer purses replaced by diaper bags spilling forth with rattles and pacifiers and picture books, her Insanity workouts replaced by Mommy and Me Yoga, the silly romance novels she read and then related to Emma plot point by steamy plot point replaced by how-to books on babies and breastfeeding. What would the two of them talk about? How would they relate? Would Emma, too, get replaced by Annie’s new mom friends?
Finishing the sandwich prep but feeling too troubled to eat one, Emma retreated back to the guest room. Eventually Nick appeared in the doorframe. “Knock, knock,” he said. “We’re starting Monopoly. I saved the iron for you.”
“I think I’ll sit this one out.”
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“I know this is a scary situation, but we’re safe here. You were right to make us evacuate. And even if we can’t go home for a few days—”
“It’s not the storm.” As soon as she said it water began pooling in her eyes. Nick sat down next to her and Emma couldn’t help nuzzling into him. (God, she was pitiful.) So she chose the easier thing to say: “Annie’s pregnant.” She no longer cared about her friend’s request to keep the news under wraps.
“Wait, seriously? Hasn’t she been drinking the whole time we’ve been here?”
“Drinks minus the booze, yes. Virgin.” The word “virgin” in relation to Annie made Emma scoff.
“Oh.” Nick looked like he was trying to gauge Emma’s reaction; Emma wondered if he feared she’d launch into a tearful speech about her ticking biological clock. It wasn’t that this hadn’t occurred to her, but there were a dozen more pressing things on her mind.
She clarified her upset: “I’m worried for our friendship. Within basically a year Annie will have changed from my fun single best friend to someone who’s totally settled down, married with a kid. Maybe that sounds selfish.”
Nick shook his head. “Hey, do you seriously think a baby has the power to break what you and Annie have? When we were living here, do you know how many times I walked in on the two of you having what I thought were choking fits, only to realize you were actually hysterical with laughter? Do you realize what most people would give for a friendship like that? Most of us are stuck with the likes of Carl for friends.” At this Emma laughed. “You and Annie are bonded for life. God, Em, pretty much the only thing Eli and I have in common is that we’ve both been trying to worm our way into your and Annie’s number-one spots for years, to no avail. And if we can’t do it, what chance does a baby have? A newborn’s like eight pounds and can’t even roll over.”
What he was saying was mostly bullshit, especially considering all Emma had recently discovered, but it made her feel better nonetheless. “How about you take a break from pouting and come play Monopoly,” he said. “I know you love being the iron, hiding your sneaky little self behind properties to dodge the rent.” Sneaky little self—the words pricked at Emma. “Come on, play with us.”
She felt incapable of making a decision, so she let Nick pull her up. “Oh, and the pregnancy’s a secret,” she said.
“Lips sealed.” Lips sealed. Your honey lips.
“Oh God.” Emma bolted from the room to the toilet, where she proceeded to cough up the contents of her stomach—all that pulpy champagne. Nick was behind her then, stroking her back, at which point it would’ve been easy to reveal what she knew. Instead, she heard her rationalization: “Too many mimosas.” For the rest of the afternoon, she let herself be the target of the group’s jokes about her daytime drinking problem, and how she was too much of a lightweight to hold her fancy brunch bubbly.
Through a daze Emma ferried her iron around the Monopoly board, landing on others’ properties and paying a steady stream of rent, somehow never getting it together to buy up her own places. Just as Eli was about to clean them all out, the lights flickered, they heard a whining sound and then a pop, and they were thrown into darkness. Annie squealed and grabbed Emma’s hand, and then all was silent—no hum of electronics or pedestrian noise from the street; for a moment even the wind stilled.
They lit candles and gathered around the crank radio to hear the news: A ConEd power station at Fourteenth Street had exploded, leaving nearly all of Manhattan below Forty-second Street in the dark. Most of Alphabet City was flooded. So was the NYU Hospital, and since backup generators had failed, patients were being evacuated to other area hospitals, although those weren’t in much better shape. These devastating facts were followed by on-the-street interviews, which Emma mostly tuned out—that is until the reporter introduced an artist from Red Hook, whose studio had already been ruined. “The water started off as a trickle,” the woman shouted; you could barely hear her over the sound of rushing rain. “But then it burst in through my windows, like some kind of power hose, dousing all of my paintings. It kept coming and coming, filling the studio. I had to wade through a foot of water to get out. Now I’m just trying to save myself, walking north until I can find a cab or someone willing to give me a lift.”
“Let’s turn that off,” said Nick. “Come on, it’s late anyway. How about bed?”
That night she and Nick had desperate sex. As Emma slammed her body into her boyfriend’s, fueled by fear and rage and anxiety, she imagined that the pounding rain outside was moving through her, the wind slapping at her skin and knotting her hair. So powerfully did she feel connected to the storm that she fully expected with her own release would come one final flash of light, one concluding crack of thunder, and then a petering out of the rain. But the elements pounded on long after Emma and Nick had finished, long after Nick had fallen into sleep. Emma stayed alert, listening. The water and wind, relentless against the windows, were oblivious to the two of them inside Annie’s guest room twenty-six floors up from street level, just a couple of the probably hundred thousand people in Lower Ma
nhattan holed up at home in darkness.
At some point she must’ve drifted off, because Emma awoke with a bolt, eyes swollen and cheeks wet with tears. Her sobs woke Nick, and before she could reconsider, she blurted out, “I know about you and Genevieve.”
In a flash Nick’s expression morphed from fuzzy with sleep to wide-awake and miserable. Even in her anguish, Emma was relieved to see he wasn’t going to deny it. “Oh, Emma, I was such an idiot.” He sputtered out everything she realized she’d been desperate to hear—the apologies, the I love you’s, the fact that it was one time and that it had been little more than a kiss. Emma believed every word. She had to. “Considering you and me and everything we’ve done and built and have, that one stupid moment hardly registers,” Nick said, his forehead scrunched up like a shar-pei dog’s. “What I mean is, it didn’t mean anything. Gah! I don’t know how to say this stuff without sounding like a soap opera. But I’m being sincere, I promise.” This made Emma smile despite herself; it was so rare for Nick to be tongue-tied. “Listen, if you want we can talk all night about it. Or I’ll shut up immediately.”
“Let’s not talk,” Emma quickly responded. As much as part of her wanted a play-by-play, a script of all that had happened along with Nick’s internal monologue, another part knew that would be the worst thing to hear. Also, Emma was exhausted. Nick nodded, and she could see he was hesitant to touch her. Emma didn’t feel better exactly, but she no longer felt like she was plummeting into a bottomless pit. She felt about like she did after Nick said he’d help her with her taxes but then spent the afternoon smoking pot and playing video games, or when he hinted that going vegetarian might be a good way for her to lose that layer of belly fat; she was angry, yes, but she wasn’t doubting the very foundations of their relationship.
Without her asking, Nick took his pillow to the floor. Emma harmonized her breathing with his, inhaling when he exhaled and vice versa, and in this way she tricked herself back to sleep.
The second time Emma awoke shivering, she saw that the sky was glimmering with a thin light, so she wrapped herself in a blanket and went to the window. The rain had stopped, but water was swishing through the streets. No one was out. Every window was dark. Emma switched on her phone, and scanned the news and her e-mail: The city’s power would likely be down for a week or more, and schools would stay closed through Friday. Her boss, Quinn, wrote that 1, 2, 3 … Ivies! was out of commission until further notice, and her mother had sent a oneliner: Stay dry and warm! XO. Genevieve had texted Emma a selfie from her bed, surrounded by stuffed animals, along with the message, My cuddle buddies during the storm! Emma winced, and jotted off a reply: Screw you! The way to get a guy is NOT by stealing mine! She quickly deleted it. She sat there trembling, thumb poised over keypad, but before she could come up with an alternative, she noticed her phone had just 10 percent left of its juice. Relieved, she powered it down.
Emma climbed back into bed, still shivering. Nick, a potential source of body heat, was still on the floor. Eventually she pulled him back up under the covers.
“Hi,” he said, hesitant.
“Hi.” She pressed her chilled feet into his shins; he didn’t even flinch.
“You know,” he said at last “when I was laid out after my injury, I finally got around to reading that favorite book of yours.”
“The House of Mirth?”
He nodded, and Emma was torn between declaring that sweet—Nick usually liked modern sci-fi, not century-old novels of manners—and saying something cutting like, That’s not all you got around to. Instead, she said nothing.
“You’ve talked about the main guy, that Selden dude, as some kind of romantic hero, as Lily’s great love interest who got away.” Emma shrugged her assent, then waited curiously. “Well, I think he’s an asshole.”
“What do you mean? Selden is the only character with any ethics, the only one who’s not willing to give up his principles for riches or popularity in that small-minded society. He refuses to play their petty games.” Emma was indignant; it actually felt good to get worked up about a fictional character and fictional events.
“Yeah, but only because he can get away with it. Because he’s a guy. He’s so judgy of your girl Lily for trying to trade her looks for a marriage proposal and security, but it’s different for her. Unlike a man, a woman in that world can’t stay single and still be accepted. She can’t just live alone with her high moral code.”
“Fair point,” Emma said, “but Selden is always trying to save Lily from those silly societal values.”
“Not quite. Didn’t you notice how he only makes himself available to her when she’s fallen on her face? And then he can be the knight in shining armor who swoops in to rescue the damsel in distress. Selden doesn’t want to be the day-to-day guy; he wants to be the hero. The hero is a much sexier role. It’s classic macho dude stuff.”
Emma considered the point. “I suppose that’s true. Um, why exactly are we talking about this?”
“I’ve been thinking about why you’re so drawn to this Lily Bart character, the ambitious thirty-year-old New Yorker.”
“She’s twenty-nine,” Emma said; the distinction seemed important.
“Okay, twenty-nine, whatever. My point is, obviously Manhattan society has changed a lot in a hundred years, but maybe not as much as we’d like to think. It seems to me that the pressures on a Lily Bart are pretty similar to the pressures on an Emma Feit—to have a kick-ass social life and relationship and home and career (maybe the career part’s new), to have a certain amount of money in the bank, to look a certain way, et cetera, et cetera. And then there’s the struggle to figure out exactly what the world expects of you and also what you really want, and to understand the difference between the two. That’s a ton of pressure. Obviously things don’t work out in the end for Lily. But even without some grand tragic ending to your story, it still seems like a lot to deal with.”
“Okay …” It was interesting to hear Nick rant about the hardships faced by female New Yorkers of Emma’s age group, especially in connection to Edith Wharton’s masterpiece, but Emma still didn’t understand what he was getting at.
“The thing is,” Nick went on, “I kind of get Selden. It can be hard to see you so ambitious, wanting a certain kind of life—your fancy job and us moving forward in our relationship in this one specific way, looking for the perfect place to set up our couple-y little life. It’s honestly hard to not feel resentful sometimes.” Emma felt her cheeks burn. She remembered that Gen had also used the word “couple-y” to describe Emma and Nick, back when she was trying to explain her own recent distance. Ha, Emma thought bitterly, recalling how she’d sympathized with Gen’s words—all lies, she now realized.
Her voice was harsh: “Nick—”
“Hold on, please hear me out. My point is that I’m the jerk, not you. I’m saying it’s hard, sometimes, to remember the kinds of pressures you face—because this stuff still isn’t nearly as intense for a guy. It can be difficult to be compassionate and patient and understanding and all the other things a boyfriend is supposed to be.”
“But, Nick, you’re assuming that I’m just mindlessly giving in to stupid societal conventions. What if I really do want these things?”
“You’re right. That’s not fair. Which actually brings me back to Selden. He can’t be bothered to get mired up in Lily’s complications. She’s working so hard to figure out how to exist in that society without totally succumbing to its more ridiculous elements, to live genuinely without also becoming a social pariah.” Emma was thinking this was a quandary more or less everyone faced: how to be true to oneself while also getting along in the world. Nick continued: “Selden only wants to be the hero. And I get that, I do: It’s exciting to be the hero, and it can be fucking hard to be the day-today guy, the grown-up in the serious relationship. That’s shitty to say, but it’s true.” Even as she was trying to wrap her head around Nick’s literary analysis, Emma was starting to understand where he was going wi
th this; she felt nervous. “I’m not at all making excuses, but on that particular day with Genevieve, I’d been feeling like a useless lump in our relationship, failing at all the practical day-to-day stuff and frustrated with my recovery. And there was Gen, looking at me like I was that hero. And I gave in to it. It was a crappy thing to do, no question—childish and selfish and hurtful to the person I love most—and I take full responsibility for the crappiness. But I guess I’m hoping this is making me seem less like a monster, and more like an idiot guy who sometimes finds being a grown-up kind of complicated and overwhelming. A guy who messed up big-time in one specific moment.”
Emma nodded, not quite in understanding, but in acknowledgment. She’d often suspected that Nick found all the trappings of adulthood more daunting than most; it was a relief to hear him admit as much, despite the consequences it had led to. But it was a lot to take in, too much. “Okay,” she said eventually.
“The other thing is, no matter how you end up taking my stupid lapse in judgment, you have to know that, unlike Lily Bart, you have tons of people in your life who love you like crazy. Me, duh, your family, and Annie. You can’t begrudge her the fact that she’s having a kid.” Emma interrupted to explain about the e-mail she’d found—how after confessing her supposed misery to Emma, Annie had gushed to her mom like the pregnancy was the best thing ever. “Em,” Nick said, “I’m sure she feels both those things, and a dozen other ones, too.” For some reason this hadn’t occurred to Emma.
“Look, it’s not fair to you that I acted like an asshole, or that your friendship is inevitably going to change—”
“And don’t forget that our home might be flooded and destroyed.”
“Right, that, too. But—”
“I forgive you.” Even if she didn’t totally mean it, Emma knew she would eventually, and she’d had enough of this conversation.
Nick nodded, looking unconvinced. “You know I love you, Em.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Emma batted away his kisses. “I’m ravenous, suddenly.” Her only sustenance in the last day and a half had been orange juice and wine.
If We Lived Here Page 26
