Mating for Life (5 page)

Fiona had eventually risen from the couch, thanked the hostess, and gone home.
The nerve of Jane, to say something like that to me,
she had thought.

Now she pulled into the driveway and turned off the car's engine, seeing the crates stacked on the wraparound porch as she did. “Damn it,” she said for the second time that day. It was produce delivery day. In the spring and summer, a farmer delivered his organic bounty to her home each week and she organized a co-op share with her neighbors. (In the winter it was every two weeks, and she set it up in her basement and didn't mind that people trooped through the house with wet boots every other Friday. In fact, she loved it, loved showing off her house, loved feeling that she was a hub in the neighborhood. The organic produce hub. Which seemed like a small thing, perhaps, to those without children—or to Ilsa, who had questioned her about it once. “Why wouldn't you just go to the farmers' market on Purchase Street on the weekends?”—but was absolutely not a small thing at all. She, by working directly with the farmer and orchestrating the weekly organic drop-off, was a part of something that was important.)

Except somehow, today, she had forgotten all about it. There were even a few neighbors standing on the porch, waiting. She felt her cheeks grow warm.
How
could she have forgotten? It was Friday. Every Friday, the produce came.

She got out of the car, leaving her groceries behind, and stepped onto the porch to help sort the vegetables. “I'm so sorry,” she said to Michelle Turnbull and Alice O'Shea, who stood waiting. “I was just . . . I had an appointment that went late.”

“It's fine, Fiona, we know how busy you are,” Michelle said, and Alice smiled, but Fiona still felt flustered and exposed. When she finally went inside, too embarrassed to start unloading her piles of generic, big-box groceries—all the cereals and granola bars and bottles of juice she needed to keep the boys fed (not all fresh and organic all the time; she realized she just wanted people to believe that)—she felt as though her cadence had been thrown off.
Focus,
she told her
self. But the Thing had seen its opening and was reminding her that it was coming. She shook her head.
No. Nothing is coming. Nothing bad is going to happen. I'm just tired.
She made an espresso in her single-serve brewer, then made it a double.

• • •

Tim came home from work early. He rubbed his eyes while he stood in the kitchen, reminding her of all three of the boys at once. Eliot was in the backyard because his “screen time” had ended, but the twins were both out, Beck at band practice and Cole at a friend's.

“The guests should start arriving around seven,” Fiona said as she layered summer vegetables in a ceramic baking dish. Everything else was prepared, and Rita was outside, setting up plates, candles, cutlery, and napkins in baskets, ice buckets, and galvanized steel bins for microbrews, glasses, and a small minibar.

“Sure. Looking forward to it. Bit of a tiring day, but I'll just have a rest for a few minutes, then shower and dress.” He walked into the kitchen. “Whatever you've been cooking smells delicious. Ah, your famous tian.” He kissed her cheek as he passed, and she smiled, feeling herself relax slightly. She liked it when he called her dishes “famous.” (She secretly considered a lot of the things she made “famous” and Tim had always seemed to understand this.)

She pulled two bottles of his favorite Riesling from the wine rack and put them in the fridge. When Tim was showered she'd open a bottle, or ask him if he wanted some scotch. She'd make their last day together before she went away a nice one, even if she
was
preoccupied with the party.

“Oh,” Tim said, pausing on his way out to the screened-in porch, where he would often take off his shoes and rest at the end of the day. “We'll be one short. Michael had to fly to Copenhagen to put out some fires. This deal
is
going to happen
but it's taking some massaging and one of us had to be there. He offered, because he knew we were having this do tonight. But he said Ilsa will still join us. They had already arranged for Sylvie to stay with the kids.”

“Oh, well, she doesn't have to . . .” Fiona began, but what she wanted to say hung in the air between them.
I don't want her to.
She saw brief disappointment—in
her;
she hated that—on Tim's face.
I wish you had never told me,
she thought but didn't say. Because how could she fault her husband for always being so honest with her, for having a moral compass so strong he seemed constantly pointed in the direction of the truth?

“Michael said she's been looking forward to it. Something about wanting to meet that artist you said you'd invited?” Michael, Tim's business partner, was fifty. His divorce had not yet been final when Ilsa, then twenty-five, had flown in for a visit and Michael had become entranced with her during a dinner party. Fiona had been surprised when Ilsa had started to date him. But now Ilsa was thirty-three and they were seven years into a marriage, with two young children: a four-year-old girl, Ani, and a three-year-old boy, Xavier. Michael also had two older children, Alexa and Shane, from his first marriage, both of whom were now in college.

“The artist's name is Lincoln Porter,” Fiona said. “His wife is coming, too.” She had invited the Porters three years in a row, but they had always declined for various reasons.

Tim loosened his tie, took off his jacket. “What does he paint?”

“Impressionist landscape.”

“Like Ilsa,” Tim said, and Fiona felt bothered that he paid such close attention to Ilsa. But she didn't say anything because she knew, in a way her husband did not, that some things were better left unsaid. Like this: that once, her beautiful younger sister had tried to kiss her husband. It was after
the very dinner party during which Ilsa had been introduced to Michael. Fiona had developed a migraine and had gone to bed, and Ilsa had volunteered to stay up and help clean. “I don't think she knows what she's doing,” Tim had said the next morning over coffee, Fiona's limp hands in his. “I think there's a lot of pain there. Her marriage just ended. She's so young to already be divorced.” Fiona had gritted her teeth.
So young
. Yes, indeed. Tim had asked her not to tell Ilsa she knew, and Fiona had complied out of loyalty to him only. “You should try to forgive her,” he had said. “You're her big sister. Maybe you can help her.” But Fiona had never been able to do either of those things.

“The Astors have a Lincoln Porter painting, above the fireplace in their great room,” she said.

“Oh. Yes. The riverbed. Very nice. I'll mention to him that I've often admired it.” He left the room and went to stretch across the chaise in the screened-in back porch.

Meanwhile, Fiona wiped the counters, then passed him to go check on things outside. She hadn't done all she had wanted to do in the garden that day. But it was only four-thirty—she had time. She picked up a small trowel from a bucket.

Later, when the phone rang, her hands were dirty and she wiped them on her pants, leaving streaks of dark on the khaki that she looked down at, surprised.
Why did I do that?

“Hello?”

A pause. “I'd like to speak to—to Timothy. Timothy Sherman. Is he there?” The foreign lilt, the way the young woman asked if he was there, the upturn at the end of the question so different from the way she, Fiona, sounded when she talked.

“I'm sorry,” Fiona said. “Could you repeat that, please?”

“Timothy Sherman. Is he there? Do I have the right number?”

Fiona swallowed hard.
Vienna.
It had to be. And somehow, she had known.

She stood outside the screened-in porch and listened, but could hardly fathom what it sounded like Tim was saying.

All she could think was,
Something happened.

• • •

The phone rang again later. It was Ilsa. Tim was still upstairs. Fiona was standing in the kitchen, still in her gardening clothes with the dirty streaks. How long had she been standing there? Could she cancel the party? No. It was too late. She needed to get upstairs and get dressed.

“Hey,” Ilsa said. She always sounded like she'd just gotten out of bed: throaty, luxuriant. “I can't
wait
to get out of the house. Do you need anything? Can I pick anything up?” The way Ilsa said “I can't wait to get out of the house” reminded Fiona of the way Ilsa had sounded as a teenager. Always longing to get away, to get out, to do something, anything at all.
You have it all, Ilsa. And yet somehow you always want more.

“Hello? Fi?” Ilsa said.

“Sorry. No. I don't need anything. Just bring yourself. See you around seven.” And she hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

Somehow she managed to shower and dress, although she couldn't remember doing it after it was already done and felt confused when she saw she had put her chin-length blond hair in a headband, applied concealer under her eyes, a small stroke of blush on each cheek, a little mascara, and that she was wearing a navy jersey dress and flat taupe sandals. Fiona on autopilot was as efficient as ever; she had even put on her good watch and diamond studs.

“Fiona,” Tim said, from where he was sitting on the bed.

“Don't,” Fiona said, and left the room, stopping just short of slamming the door. Eliot would hear.

When she came down the stairs she saw that Ilsa had arrived and
was
standing under a tree outside in the failing
light of early evening. Fiona's sister now turned and walked toward the house, brushing grass or something from her dress as she did so. As though, Fiona thought, she had been sitting somewhere, maybe on a grassy hill, maybe at the park, waiting for an acceptable time to arrive.
Other sisters would say,
Come whenever you want.
But I guess I'm not that kind of sister.
She was carrying a bag in one hand and a little jacket in the other—it looked tiny, pointless, an accessory. She had on a teal silk dress with buttons up the middle and ruche up the sides. Her brown fringe fell into her eyes and the flyaways in her shoulder-length hair lit up in the dim glow of the electric candles in lanterns on the porch. Her left arm clattered with bangles as she reached up to ring the doorbell.

“Hello!” When she was inside, she kissed Fiona on both cheeks, and Fiona had to stand on her toes because she was in flats and Ilsa was in stilettos, high, strappy, and bronze. This annoyed Fiona, who thought about her floors, her grass. She didn't ask people to take off their shoes when they came over but always hoped they would be practical about their footwear. Ilsa never was.

“I'm sorry Michael couldn't make it,” Fiona said.

Ilsa shrugged and stepped farther inside. “Is anyone here yet?”

“No. You're first,” Fiona said, following her into the kitchen.

“Where do you want these?” Ilsa lifted two bottles of Veuve Clicquot out of the bag.

“You're far too generous. Thank you.” Fiona took them and put them in the fridge, feeling irritated by them. It was
so
Ilsa. The two bottles of French champagne made everything else—the bottles of Riesling, the summer vegetable tian, now on porcelain appetizer spoons, the frenched lamb chops, ready to grill, the crostini—seem drab.

“Are you okay?” Ilsa asked.

“Fine. Why?”

“You look . . . tired or something.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Oh, don't be so sensitive. You look perfect as usual. I just thought . . . But never mind. Can I have a drink? And where is that husband of yours? I have to chastise him for throwing my husband to those wolves in Copenhagen.”

Fiona opened the fridge and stood still for a moment.
That husband of yours.
Jane, the outspoken woman from her book club whose comments had so distracted Fiona the evening before, had once met Ilsa and said, “Now, there's a woman I wouldn't trust around my husband.” But she'd said it in an admiring way. Fiona, if she had known Jane at all, would have said something to Jane like,
You don't know the half of it
.

“He's upstairs. He got home late,” Fiona lied, struggling to keep her tone even. Should she take another pill?
Bad idea. No.

Ilsa wrinkled her nose at the Riesling. “Don't you have anything less sweet?” she asked.

“There's Pinot Grigio outside. Or I can open the champagne.”

“No, no, that's for you and Tim. And besides, it's not cold.”

The doorbell. Fiona took a deep breath.
You can do this. You can pretend nothing is wrong. You do it all the time.

• • •

The artist was the last to arrive, with his wife. He was tall, with a dark suit jacket that seemed too formal and perfectly formal at the same time. His eyes were blue, his hair was white. Underneath the suit jacket was a white shirt, no tie. He was handsome in that overly masculine way Fiona didn't especially like (everything enlarged, hands, jaw, nose, brow).

Lincoln's wife stood beside him, gray-streaked blond and birdlike. Fiona couldn't remember her name. Anna? Elizabeth? Something traditional. She wanted to ask Tim because
he never forgot anyone's name, but had managed to get through most of the evening speaking only to Tim when absolutely necessary. And this, Fiona decided, was not absolutely necessary. What did it matter what the wife's name was? For once in her life she was not going to be the perfect hostess, was not going to go around introducing people and matchmaking guests and worrying about every little thing. She nodded and waved to Lincoln and his nameless bird-wife and went to the bathroom, where she pulled the door closed and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes and attempting to compose herself. It was the second time that evening she had needed to do this.