Leaving Haven (21 page)

“Duncan?” She heard the uncertainty in her own voice.

He looked up, and flashed a smile at her and became himself again, pale blue eyes crinkled up at the corners, the smile breaking the stern planes of his face into something friendly, familiar. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You'll figure it out about the checkbook?”

And he nodded and went back to his computer.

A
LICE'S
MOTHER
SAT
across from her in the booth, her fingers drumming against the wooden table. Alice's mother was everything Alice was not: petite, blond, absentminded, fond of gold jewelry and bright prints. She wore that kind of blouse now, something silky with a draped neckline, hot pink with black zebra stripes.

“You should have another one, Ally,” her mother said. She was passing through D.C. on her way to Florida with Oliver, her latest boyfriend, whose name Alice could only remember because it began with
O
like
Ohio,
which was where her mother lived now. “I
loved
being in a big family. I would have had a million more kids if your father had stuck around.”

“I'm sure you would have,” Alice said, choosing to ignore the dig at her father. She decided not to point out that none of Rita's “love interests,” as Rita called them, had stuck around for more than a year or two, which made her father's
three
years with Rita seem like a veritable lifetime of commitment.

Rita could not have picked a worse time to blow through town. Alice was on day nine of her fertility drugs. She had gained almost nine pounds, and her breasts were sore, her abdomen bloated, and she was so cranky she wanted to stab her mother with a fork when Rita greeted her at the restaurant with, “Ally! You look so much better with some meat on your bones! Don't tell me you've started actually eating dessert!”

This was the way Rita had always talked to her, as though Alice were some kind of robot, a superdisciplined superhuman who didn't know how to let go and have fun like normal people. Alice had tried to point out to her more than once that normal people often had normal childhoods; childhoods in which the adult
acted
like an adult so the child didn't have to. But what was the point? Rita was Rita and she had her own view of the world, and nothing Alice said or did was going to change that now.

“Duncan and I are happy with one,” Alice said, wishing the waitress would hurry up with their sandwiches so Rita might get distracted and change the subject. She wondered if Rita, who was so completely clueless about almost anything regarding Alice, had somehow sensed that Alice's body was as ripe and fertile as it could be at this moment. The ultrasound she had had this morning had shown six perfect eggs, and the egg retrieval was scheduled for tomorrow.

“I'm sure you're happy with one,” Rita said. “But I bet Duncan wants more.”

This was the other thing about her mother: she adored Duncan and was convinced that Alice did not love him/understand him/attend to him as well as she, Rita, would have had
she
been his wife. The fact that Rita had never been a successful partner to anyone other than her cat, Tallulahbelle, for more than thirty-six months was lost on her. Rita thought Alice had made “the catch of the century” when she married Duncan, the lawyer with the impeccable manners and big salary, who had blue eyes and a firm jaw to boot.

“Duncan doesn't want more kids,” Alice said.

“Of course he does. That's why he married someone young, like you.”

Alice wished, as she had wished her whole life, that her mother would express some interest in Alice herself—her teaching, her research, her work with the PTA, her fitness pursuits, the latest book she'd read, her political views, anything. But her mother tended toward two topics—men and motherhood—and she didn't consider Alice to be particularly informed or competent on either one.

“Actually,” Alice said, casting a grateful eye upon the waitress as she placed their sandwiches in front of them, “Duncan married me because he thinks I'm smart, and intriguing, and reliable, and capable, and
sexy as hell.
” Duncan had never actually
said
he found Alice “sexy as hell,” but Alice threw that in because she knew her mother thought she was too reserved and far from sexy.

Rita looked at her and raised one eyebrow. “Well, I hope that's true,” she said. “If that's how he feels after ten or however many years of marriage, good for you.”

In fact, Alice wasn't sure Duncan still felt that way at all, but her mother was the last person she could talk to about that. Since he'd started this new job, he'd been even more distracted, more tired. When he came home from work he would brush his lips across her cheek and then disappear into the living room and his laptop. He was tired, and not the “touchy-feely” type anyway, as he said. Alice didn't consider herself “touchy-feely,” either, but she did wonder what it might be like to be with someone who came booming into the house after work, calling out her name, or who would come up behind her and wrap both arms around her and nuzzle her neck, the way Cliff Huxtable did to Claire. Their sex life had dwindled to a lazy once a month, a perfunctory conjunction with Alice on top, a quick roll over, Duncan on top, and then a kiss good night.

Rita eyed Alice's sandwich, the “Power Veggie” on seven-grain toast. “All that healthy eating,” she said. “You think that really makes a difference?”

Alice paused, one hand holding the sandwich, halfway to her mouth. “Yes,” she said. “I do.” She had been extra careful with everything she put into her body over the last three months to be sure her eggs were as perfect as they could be for Georgia, without a trace of pesticides or pharmaceuticals or alcohol.

Rita shook her head. “We're all gonna die anyway,” she said, picking up the Reuben she had ordered, dripping with melted cheese and Thousand Island dressing. “Might as well have fun.”

“I can have fun without eating junk,” Alice said, and then wished she could retract her words because they sounded so self-righteous and prissy, all the things her mother accused her of being.

“Well, I believe in having fun,” Rita said. She put her sandwich back down on the plate. “And speaking of fun, Ally, listen. I came through town today on purpose, kind of, to see you. Ollie has a great job opportunity in Chile, and I think we're going to go.”

“In Chile? What does he do?”

“He's a mechanic, he works on big trucks. There's lots of opportunity down there and it seems like an adventure.”

“An adventure?” To her surprise, Alice felt a sudden panic, the same panic she had felt at six or nine or ten when Rita would head out the door for the evening.
Don't go!
She pressed her lips together to keep the words inside her mouth.

Rita picked up her sandwich and took a big bite. She nodded.

“But for how long? Where will you live? What about Wren?” Rita was a haphazard grandmother at best, but Wren adored her nonetheless.

“A couple of years, maybe two or three,” Rita said, when she finished chewing. She picked up her napkin and wiped her mouth. “You can fly down and visit with Wren. It'll be a great adventure for you. We'll be in Santiago, I think. Ollie has the details.”

Alice pressed her knees together under the table so her legs wouldn't shake. It was absurd, this reaction of hers.

“But you're fifty-two.”
What a stupid thing to say.

Rita arched one eyebrow at her, the same thing Duncan did to express surprise, dismay, puzzlement. “And what does that have to do with anything?”

“I don't know.” Alice felt herself flush and turned her face toward the window, away from her mother. “What if you get sick and you're in Chile? Or what if I get sick or Duncan dies or something?”

The panic Alice felt was as unexpected as her mother's news, an icy ball of fear that started in her belly and rose into her chest and throat. It was crazy, because Alice and Rita had never been close, not even when Alice was little. Rita had been an indifferent mother at best; a dangerously negligent mother at worst. But she was, still, Alice's mother, the only mother she would ever have, and Alice could not imagine a world without her. She thought suddenly of her grandfather, her mother's father, who had visited once when she was a little girl. She had had a bad earache, and he had leaned forward to blow a warm breath of cigar smoke into her ear. It had soothed the pain right away. She longed for that kind of comfort now.

“I'm not eighty,” Rita said. “And I'm going to Chile, not Antarctica. And you and Duncan both look pretty healthy to me.”

“I don't want you to go—” Alice wanted to say “Mom,” but she had never called Rita anything other than “Rita” her whole life. “Okay?” There, she had said it.

Rita smiled at her and reached across the table to pat her hand. “You're a funny girl, Ally. You always were. You'll be fine if I go—you're a married woman with an almost-grown-up girl of your own and a good job. It won't matter much to you if I'm in Ohio or Argentina.”

“But—”

“You should eat this Reuben,” Rita said. “You look good with a few extra pounds.” She proffered her sandwich to Alice. “I've got to go soon.”

“You can't just tell me something like this and leave,” Alice said.

Rita sighed. “I'll come back in three weeks, on our way back home. We can talk more then.”

“I don't want to talk more then,” Alice said. She felt about six years old again, frightened her mother might never come back. “I want to talk now.”

Rita's eyes met Alice's, blue on blue. She picked up the uneaten half of her sandwich, stuffed with corned beef (and all its concomitant nitrates) and processed cheese and pale orange dressing, and held it out to Alice.

Alice took the sandwich from her mother and bit into it. It tasted so good she almost wept.

14

Georgia

Two Months Earlier, April 2012

G
eorgia had never felt so strange. Not physically—physically she felt wonderful, even though she was more than seven months pregnant now, the sight of her own toes a distant memory under her giant, burgeoning belly. She had gained just seventeen pounds so far, and her ankles and fingers hadn't swelled as they had with Liza, so she could still wear her wedding ring and her favorite shoes. Her hair brushed against her collarbone, glossier than ever, more auburn than ever even though she hadn't had it colored since she got pregnant, and her eyes were clear and bright. She walked every day, often with Chessy and Lily Blue since Alice was so busy now, and her legs were toned and firm, her skin tanned by the spring sun. She glowed.

But inside she felt a strange unease. Every day she woke with the sense that she had forgotten something important, something critical like turning off the gas burner or where she had hidden her mother's diamond ring. But she'd jump up to find the stove cold, her mother's ring where it always was, in a little bag nestled among her lingerie in the top drawer of her dresser. She felt uneasy about Liza, although Liza insisted she was fine, and about John, who had been jumpy and distant for weeks now, turning away from her in bed, averting his eyes when she changed.

“I thought you liked me pregnant,” she said to him one night, turning on her side in bed to face him. “Remember with Liza? We had so much sex I thought the baby would come a month early.”

“It's not you,” John said, lying on his back, eyes closed. “I'm thirteen years older than I was then and I don't have the sex drive I used to. And I work a lot and we have a teenager. Don't worry.”

But there it was, that unease. It was like walking into a spiderweb and feeling as though thin, gossamery threads were clinging to you everywhere, even once you'd brushed them away. Something was still there, light as a whisper and unseen.

And Alice was strange, too. Georgia made jokes to herself sometimes about feeling as though
she
were the one who had stepped through the looking glass, into a world in which everything looked normal on the surface, but wasn't, really.

“Pregnancy jitters,” Polly scoffed, when Georgia tried to explain how she felt. “It's hormones.”

Georgia didn't think so. But because she had no other explanation, she had no choice but to agree.

G
EORGIA
COULD
NOT
for the life of her find her phone. She called it from the kitchen phone and it rang and rang, but wherever it was, it was ringing out of earshot. She needed to text Liza, who was at school, to remind her that she was picking her up early today for a three o'clock dental appointment. Maybe she could use John's phone. Georgia tiptoed into the bedroom, where John lay napping, and picked up his phone from his bedside table. He'd worked until one this morning, gotten up at seven for a tennis match, gone back to bed at nine, and was now in a deep, heavy sleep. Georgia tiptoed back out. She stood in the kitchen and started to type out a text to Liza when another text came in, from some guy named Alec.