Leaving Haven (6 page)

“Think about what?” The words Alice had wanted to say for the past month came bubbling up, spilling out of her. “About whether or not you're willing to be seen at a restaurant with me? About whether you can stand to spend an hour with me in which we actually have to
deal
with each other?”

“Alice.” Duncan looked around, to see if anyone had overheard her. “
Shh.
This is not a conversation we should be having in public.”

Alice looked up at him. She was tall, almost five-nine, but Duncan loomed over her at six-three. “Well then, where?” she said. “And when? Because honestly, I'd rather have you just kick me out and tell me you never want to see me again than go on with all this politeness. I can't stand it anymore.”

Duncan looked at her, his lips compressed in a thin line. “This is not the place for this conversation, Alice,” he said. He still held the program from Wren's performance in his hand, and now he rolled it up, stuffed it in his pocket, and turned toward the door. “I'm leaving.” He walked down the hallway in long, angry strides, the heels of his oxfords tapping on the tile floor.

Alice watched him go. She knew that, no matter how angry he was, he would get into the car and wait for her, because he was too much of a gentleman to leave her behind in the now-deserted school, the almost-empty parking lot. He would turn on the car engine, adjust the radio, look out the window to see if he could spot her coming out the big glass doors. And what could she do? She had disappointed him enough already. Alice walked down the hall as fast as her wedge heels would allow.

They drove home in silence. Duncan pulled into the garage and they both got out. As they walked up the concrete path to the back door, Alice stumbled in her wedges. She felt her foot roll under her, a sharp stab of pain in her right ankle. She gasped.

Duncan turned. “What is it?”

“It's okay. I twisted my ankle a little. These shoes.” She tried to smile. She couldn't stand to think about what she would do if she had a sprain. The one thing—
the only thing
—that had allowed her even a small measure of sanity over the last weeks was her daily workout. If she couldn't run—or do squats or do lunges or jump rope—she would lose her mind. Literally.

Alice straightened up and put her weight on the traitorous ankle, and felt shooting pain. “I can't walk on it,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

Duncan came back to where she stood and put an arm around her. “Here,” he said. “Lean on me.”

He had not touched her in more than a month. He hadn't brushed up against her at the bathroom sink or let his foot nudge hers in bed or allowed his fingers to glance against hers when he handed her a dish to dry.
Five weeks
. Alice wanted to weep at the feel of his arm across her back, his hand against her ribs as he guided her up the steps.

“Sit here.” He pushed her gently onto the couch in the living room and knelt down to unbuckle her silly sandals. He pulled a pillow from the couch and put it on the coffee table in front of her, and lifted her tender ankle onto the pillow. “I'll get some ice.”

She sat looking at her ankle, which was already swollen. She heard the clatter of the ice trays in the kitchen, running water, drawers opening and closing. Duncan came back in and wrapped a dishtowel around her ankle and placed a ziplock bag filled with ice cubes on top of the towel. He wrapped another towel around the bag and her ankle, to keep it all in place. “There.”

He stood back and looked at it, then at her. “Are you okay?”

His kindness undid her. He should have left her hobbling outside, but of course he would never do that, because he was such a fundamentally decent man. She buried her face in her hands and cried. She had not cried during all these long weeks when he had avoided her touch, her look, her conversation. She had not cried in November when she'd found out about the cruel hoax the girls had played on Wren, and she hadn't cried when Wren had wept in her arms over the betrayal. She hadn't cried—really cried—over her mother. So many things going all wrong, and Alice had kept herself together, until now.

“
No,
” she said, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I'm
not
okay. I'm sorry—sorrier than you can know, because
you
would never do something like I did. I'm lonely and terrified of losing you and I can't stand not talking about it anymore. It's like I landed on the moon and I don't recognize anything, not even myself.”

She took in a deep breath. “I am not a person who makes excuses,” she said. “I don't have an excuse. There was nothing rational about it. But, Duncan”—she looked up at him, willing him to understand—“there were reasons it happened, reasons we need to talk about. And it has changed me, and I hope you can understand that. I'm a different person; I
know myself
in a different way now. And I can promise nothing like that will happen again.”

He was silent for a long time, looking at her.

“You're not who I thought you were,” he said at last.

“
I know,
” she said. “And I know that must be a shock, and it must hurt. I don't—I didn't—know myself. But this has changed me.”

“I hate change,” he said. He picked up his laptop and left the room, leaving Alice there alone on the couch, bruised.

S
HE
LET
HIM
be. It was like soothing a wounded animal, she realized. A few years ago Wren's cat, Gremlin, the most easygoing and loving of creatures, had developed an abscess inside his ear. All at once he had become like a wild thing, slinking around the floor on his belly, terrified of every movement and sound, staring at her without recognition, out of his mind with pain. That was Duncan right now, Alice understood. And she couldn't do anything other than hold out her hands—in support, in supplication—and wait for him to come to her. He was a private and still man, Duncan, and now that she had burst through the fog of ennui and restlessness that had held her for so long, she could see that still man again, in all his sweetness.

On their second date, he had taken her to Arlington National Cemetery, of all places. It was late May, long after the peak of the cherry blossoms, and the white headstones stood bright against the vivid green of the spring grass. Alice, ever the good student, studied the map and looked for every point of interest as they walked up the long hill toward the Lee mansion.

“Joe Louis is buried here,” Alice said. She had grown up in Dearborn, where her mother worked at the Eppinger factory, applying coats of white lacquer to polished brass fishing lures. Every time her mother took her to downtown Detroit, Alice was thrilled and a little bit terrified by the eight-thousand-pound sculpture of Louis's arm that hung from bronze poles in Hart Plaza. It was so strange, that enormous arm with the clenched fist.

Duncan took her by the elbow. “I didn't bring you here to look at the graves,” he said. “Look up.”

“Up?” She glanced at the towering trees arcing overhead, the steel-gray sky. “At what?”

“The trees,” he said. “This is the finest collection of old trees you'll find in any urban area. Some of them are more than two hundred years old; they've been here since the Lee family lived here, in the eighteen fifties.”

They strolled under a giant empress tree with leaves the size of dinner plates; by the massive, two-hundred-something-year-old oak shading the Kennedy graves; and finally over to a huge American yellowwood dripping with foot-long white blossoms.

“Look at that,” Duncan said, his voice full of wonder. “Yellowwoods only bloom every two to four years. That's really something to see.”

Alice looked at Duncan with fresh eyes. She had immediately been drawn to the precision and order of the cemetery, the rows upon rows of matching white headstones, laid out in such perfect symmetry. And here was Duncan, looking upward, showing her something she never would have noticed. He was eager to share his knowledge, to guide her, to watch out for her—all the things she had wanted but never had. She decided right there that she wanted to marry him. She was nineteen years old.

H
E
DIDN'T
WANT
to talk, so she didn't push him. He didn't want to see a counselor, at least not yet, so she let that go, too. She waited, wondering if she should be looking for a full-time job so that she could support herself if—
Don't go there. Don't think about it.

She tried to make things seem normal, for Wren's sake. The household ran as it always had, with Alice teaching and driving Wren to her various practices and social events and cooking dinner. Duncan came home late, often at nine or ten, and would go upstairs to chat with Wren and ask her about her day before coming downstairs to eat dinner alone at the kitchen counter, responding to anything Alice said with a polite nod. Often Alice would step outside onto the back deck after Duncan ate to feel the cool evening air against her face and breathe.

Sometimes she saw Duncan looking at her, or looking at Wren, with an odd expression on his face, but she could not tell what he was thinking.

One evening he came home from work and walked into the kitchen and said, “I have something for you.”

Her heart leaped in fear as he reached into his briefcase. Was it a separation agreement? Divorce papers?

“Here.” He held out a book, a blue book with a picture of a castle on the cover. She took it from him. Frommer's guide to Scotland. Back at Christmas they had talked about taking a family trip to the UK next summer, to retrace Duncan's roots.

“Maybe you can plan our trip for next summer,” he said. “You know, check things out online or make a few calls.”

Our trip. Next summer.
Alice felt something stir inside her. It was fragile; it was whisper thin; but it glowed with a steady, white-hot light. Hope.

4

Georgia

A Year Earlier, April 2011

O
ver the next few days, Georgia thought about what it might be like to have a baby created from one of Chessy's eggs. Would Chessy have maternal feelings for the baby? Would Georgia love the baby as much as she loved Liza? How did one go about asking such a favor?

Georgia sat down on one of the tall stools at the counter in her kitchen, picked up a paintbrush, dipped it in blue food coloring, and began to paint the fondant peacock feathers she had made for the Bergdorf wedding cake. Getting pregnant with Liza had been so easy. Insert Tab A into Slot B and presto! Nine months later, a baby. She had taken so much for granted. She put down her paintbrush and reached for one of Amelia's oatmeal butterscotch cookies, sitting where she had left them on the counter, wrapped in plastic wrap. John had eaten so many of them that he felt somewhat sick, so now here they were, tempting Georgia.

Maybe she could ask Chessy over for dinner and bring up the idea of being an egg donor, she thought. But then, Chessy almost never came to dinner. She did stop by once a week to pick up wedding cakes and deliver them for Georgia, something Georgia paid her far too much to do, but Chessy needed the money. She couldn't ask Chessy about something so important while they were rushing to get a cake out. She should ask her while they were doing something fun, like, like—Georgia searched her brain. For Georgia these days, “something fun” meant going to a book club meeting with a few friends and drinking wine. For Chessy, Georgia was sure, “something fun” meant going out for drinks at midnight after working on some play, and then going clubbing.
Argh.

Georgia swallowed another bite of cookie.
I don't even like these,
she thought.
Why am I eating them?
The answer, of course, was that she was eating them because they were there, but she had to admit, petty as it was, that she was also eating them so she could feel superior about being a better baker than Amelia. As she bit into her third (or was it fourth?) cookie of the day, the phone rang.

“Hi,” Alice said. “What are you doing?”

Georgia stopped eating and held the bite of cookie inside her cheek so Alice wouldn't hear her chewing. Alice was supremely disciplined and didn't eat anything with white sugar more than once a week. She never judged Georgia or chided her about her eating habits, but Georgia felt guilty anyway.

“Peacock feathers,” Georgia mumbled.

“Peacock feathers?”

Georgia finished chewing and swallowed the last bit of cookie in a big gulp.

“Fondant. For a cake.”

“I need to talk to you about Wren.”

This was Alice's one eccentricity in Georgia's mind—the ridiculous name she had given her daughter. Wren: What kind of name was that? Georgia believed in good, plain names, like Liza. Or Ben—
if I have a boy, I'll name him Ben,
she thought, although Ben would never work with a last name like Bing. Nicholas would be good. Nicholas Bing. Maybe Nicholas Franklin Bing, after her father, Frank. Of course the reason she loved simple names was because her parents had given her and her sisters such strange names. George, Paul, and Frank—the three sons her father had wanted so much—had turned out to be Georgia, Paulina, and Francesca, names all three girls disliked. Georgia was the only one who hadn't shortened hers to a nickname, as Polly and Chessy had, because really, what nickname could you make from Georgia? Something even less attractive, like Georgie, or George. That's why she'd given Liza such a lovely, easy name—Eliza Grace. Perfect. As Nicholas Franklin would be . . .