Table for Seven (23 page)

A
WEEK AFTER THE MAY dinner-party, Fran was still jittery with excitement. Something had passed between her and Coop. A charge. A frisson. Whenever Fran thought of it, she felt a shudder of excitement, a delicious sensation she distantly remembered from younger days, when a crush ran his hand down her back or brushed the hair away from her face.

At first, Fran had wondered if the moment had been one-sided. But Coop had been uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the evening, which made sense. If he was having feelings for her—the wife of his oldest friend—of course it would bother him. Just look at what happened that day on the boat, all those years ago.

The question was, what was she going to do now?

I can’t do anything. I’m married. I would never cheat on Will
, Fran kept telling herself. But then, a minute later, she’d think,
But I have to find out if Coop is having the same feelings that I’m having. I have to see him. And I have to do it alone, not when Will and the girls are around. But when? And what will I say?

These thoughts swirled around and around, refusing to dislodge themselves. Coop hovered in her consciousness while she packed lunches and vacuumed, and even while she was working with one of her physical therapy patients. He was quickly becoming an obsession, which was both exhilarating and exhausting.

What do I do? I can’t do anything. But why can’t I? Will, that’s why. But Will and I barely even touch anymore, much less have sex. Aren’t I too young to already be a celibate, to have all of my life’s passion behind me?
Fran wondered, as she chopped tomatoes for the chicken Cobb salad they were having for dinner. She always added extra avocado and blue cheese and dressed it in a tarragon vinaigrette.

“Bye, Mom.”

Fran looked up to see a flash of black pass by the kitchen door.

“Iris?” she called out. “Where are you going?”

“Over to Hannah’s,” Iris called back.

Fran heard the front door open. “Wait! Come back here,” she said.

“I’m going to be late!”

“Then you’ll be late,” Fran said.

Iris huffed, but closed the door and returned slowly, reluctantly to the kitchen. Fran looked at her daughter and recoiled.

“What in God’s name did you do to your hair?” she asked.

Iris rolled her eyes, which were rimmed with thick black kohl liner. Her bangs had been inexpertly cut. They were far too short—ending an inch above her eyebrows—and had been curled under, probably to disguise the uneven ends.

“I cut it,” Iris said, on the defensive, as usual.

“But it’s …” Fran had been about to say
it’s awful
, but stopped herself. It was hard enough being a teenage girl as it was, and she didn’t want Iris to feel self-conscious. Then again, she had to know it didn’t look good. “Did you cut it yourself?”

“Yes. And I like it like this,” Iris said.

It’s just hair. It will grow back
, Fran told herself.

“In the future, let me know when you want to change your style and I’ll take you to the salon,” Fran said.

Iris just shrugged and picked at her dark purple nails. “Can I go?”

“No. Go wash your face first,” Fran said.

“What! Why?”

“Don’t raise your voice, young lady. You’re not going out of the house with that much eye makeup on,” Fran said. She had a flash of déjà vu, and it suddenly occurred to Fran that she’d had nearly the same conversation with her own mother when she was a teenager.

Great
, Fran thought.
I really have turned into my mother
. And suddenly she felt decrepit, and a million miles away from the girl wearing the blue bikini who Coop had come close to kissing all those years ago.

“I’m just going over to Hannah’s. Why does it matter if I’m wearing eye makeup?” Iris said.

She has a point
, Fran thought.
What harm is there in a little eyeliner—okay, a lot of eyeliner
—if
she’s just doing her math homework? Sure, Hannah’s mother will judge me for letting her out like that. Then again, Hannah’s mother wears her hair too blond and her shorts too short, so who is she to judge anyone?

“Okay, fine, go,” Fran said.

“Really?” Iris looked unsettled at the easy victory.

“You’re just going to Hannah’s? You two aren’t going to the mall or out anywhere else?”

“No, we’ll be at her house the whole time,” Iris promised.

“Okay, good. Call me if you change locations,” Fran said.

Iris looked like she couldn’t believe her luck. “Okay, bye,” she said, turning and hurrying out of the house before Fran could change her mind.

The phone rang, and Fran picked it up. “Hello?”

“Fran, it’s Jaime.” She sounded half-hysterical, and one of the children was wailing in the background. “Is Iris there?”

“Hey. No, she just left. Why, what’s wrong?”

“Logan shut his hand in the door. I need to take him in for X-rays, and I can’t get hold of Mark, and I need to find someone to watch Ava,” Jaime said. The cacophony of screams in the background got louder. Jaime sounded like she was on the verge of tears herself.

“Oh, no, poor Logan. Don’t worry, I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you so much,” Jaime said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Just give me five minutes,” Fran promised.

WHEN MARK GOT HOME, Jaime was in the middle of reorganizing their closet. It had suddenly occurred to her that she really should organize her clothes so that they hung not just by season and by type—skirts with skirts, jackets with jackets—but also by color. As soon as Ava and Logan had gone to bed—without argument, for once, as they were both too exhausted from the trauma of the day to fight sleep—she’d headed upstairs to tackle the project, and was still in the midst of the reorganization when Mark appeared at the closet door, looking confused.

“What are you doing?”

Jaime, who was sorting her jeans—white to light rinse to dark rinse to black—glanced up at him. His face was flushed with a healthy sheen, as though he’d been out in the fresh air.

She wondered if she looked as tired and hollowed-out as she felt. Her eyes were sore from the steady trickle of tears, her neck was stiff, and her head was buzzing with echoes of Logan’s cries. She supposed she should have put some thought into what she was going to say to her husband.

“I’m reorganizing the closet,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Work, the tennis club. Why? Is something wrong?”

“You never called me back. I left you a bunch of messages. But you never called me back,” Jaime said.

Mark took a step toward her, concern flickering. “What happened? Is everyone all right? Logan? Ava?”

“They’re both fine. At least, they are now. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“It ran out of power. I didn’t notice until I went to check my messages on the way home from the club.”

“I’ve been trying to call you for six hours. You didn’t notice your phone was out of power that entire time?”

Mark shrugged. “No. I’ve been too busy. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Jaime turned her attention to her shirts. White, white, pink, yellow, blue, pink and blue striped. She hesitated, and then switched the pink and the yellow around, so that it was pink, pink and blue stripe, blue. Much better.

“Jaime?”

“Logan shut his hand in the bedroom door,” Jaime said without turning around.

“Aw, poor guy.”

Jaime looked over her shoulder at her husband, underwhelmed by his reaction. “I had to take him in for X-rays.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

“Did he break anything?”

“No. But he was really upset. He was in quite a bit of pain,” Jaime said. “And I couldn’t get ahold of you, so Fran had to come over and watch Ava while I took Logan to the doctor.”

“I told you, my phone was out of power.”

“I tried calling you at work, too. April said you were out of the office.”

“I had a client meeting,” Mark said. “And then I was at the club.”

“And I tried calling the tennis club. They said you weren’t there,” Jaime said, turning to look directly at her husband for the first time. She wanted to see how he reacted to this news.

This was as close as she’d ever come to asking him outright if he was having an affair. Mark frowned, and, Jaime thought, looked confused.

“But I was there. Em and I were playing on the back court. Maybe the girl in the office didn’t know we were there. You can’t see that court from where she sits,” Mark said.

“She seemed pretty sure you weren’t. She wouldn’t go check, even when I said it was an emergency.”

Mark shrugged. “She probably just couldn’t be bothered to get up off her ass. I’ll say something to Becky about it.”

“No, don’t. The girl in the tennis club isn’t the problem. The problem is that you were out of touch in the middle of a family crisis,” Jaime said. She folded her arms over her chest.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Mark said. He sighed and rubbed his temples. “It really wasn’t an emergency, was it? Did Logan really need to have X-rays, or were you just overreacting? You tend to do that whenever the kids get even the smallest bump or bruise.”

Jaime was aware that Mark was engaging in what she always liked to call his lawyer arguing tactic. Rather than discussing
why
he had been out of contact for such an extended period of time—and the effect this had on his family—he
wanted to instead go on the attack, challenging her decision to take Logan to the doctor. Rather than defend the indefensible, refocus the argument. But even though Jaime knew what Mark was doing—and knew that she should keep him on point—she was infuriated at this challenge to her judgment. Mark hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen Logan screaming with pain. Not just fear—although, of course, he had certainly been scared—but in actual pain.

“How can you say that I was overreacting, that it wasn’t a crisis, when you weren’t even here?”

“Kids shut their hands in doors all the time. I know Emily did it once or twice when she was little, and we never took her for X-rays.” Mark shrugged out of his sweaty T-shirt and tossed it on top of the laundry hamper.

Jaime’s throat grew thick with anger and tears stung in her eyes. She blinked, willing herself not to cry. It always happened when she was angry, and then Mark would accuse her of trying to manipulate him with tears.

“Logan’s hand turned red and began swelling. I called the pediatrician’s office and spoke to Dr. Hung’s nurse. She was the one who told me to take Logan in for X-rays. She said that kids his age have soft bones that are easily damaged,” Jaime said.

“But she hadn’t seen Logan at that point, right? She was basically just giving you the worst case scenario. Look, I’m not criticizing you,” Mark said.

The hell you’re not
, Jaime thought.

“I know you did what you
thought
was right. But if Logan’s fine—and he is fine, right?—well, then, you just got yourself worked up over nothing,” Mark said.

“I am
not
worked up over nothing! I’m upset because you weren’t there when I needed you,” Jaime said.

“I told you, my phone was out of power. It’s not like I was deliberately avoiding you. I was at work,” Mark said.

“And at the tennis club,” Jaime said.

Mark’s face hardened. “Is that what this is about? You don’t like me spending time at the club with my daughter, so you manufacture a crisis so you have something to be angry at me about?”

“Manufacture a crisis?” Jaime echoed, staring at her husband in disbelief. “Do you think I
wanted
Logan to shut his hand in the door?”

“No. But you might work what’s basically a minor household incident up into a major drama just to try to make me feel guilty. I mean, how bad could it have been if you’re now cleaning out the closet?” Mark asked.

Jaime could feel her grip slipping. Tears brimmed in her eyes, causing her vision to go blurry. “I’m not cleaning, I’m organizing. Because it makes me feel better. Calmer. And you weren’t here, so you don’t know how bad it was. But I’ll tell you—it was horrible. Logan was screaming in pain, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Mark’s expression softened. “That must have been very scary.”

“It was.” Jaime drew in a ragged breath. “And I kept trying to call you, and you wouldn’t pick up.”

“Because my phone was out of power.”

“But I didn’t know that. I just couldn’t get you, and I needed you. We needed you,” Jaime said.

Mark leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry my phone was out of power.”

This was nothing short of a major victory. Mark never apologized for anything. Jaime could feel her anger ebbing,
soothed by his admission that he had let her down. Or, at least, he’d come as close to admitting that as he ever would.

“And now you think I’m being some sort of a drama queen,” Jaime said, sniffling. It occurred to her that sobbing uncontrollably tended to reinforce Mark’s view of her as a drama queen, but she couldn’t seem to stem the flow of tears. It had been such a long and difficult day.

“No, I don’t. I just said that because I felt like you were attacking me,” Mark said. Jaime leaned against him, too tired to stay angry.

“I didn’t mean to attack you. I was just so scared. What if Logan had been seriously hurt? I couldn’t bear it,” Jaime said. A shudder went through her as she remembered Logan’s wails of pain. Just the idea of him being seriously injured made her sick to her stomach.

“I couldn’t, either. Thank God he’s fine.” Mark kissed the top of her head. “Is there any wine?”

“Yes. I opened a bottle earlier.”

“Great, I could use a glass. Can I get you one?”

“Sure, thanks,” Jaime said, giving him a watery smile.

It wasn’t until after he’d walked out of the closet, whistling softly, that Jaime realized he’d never explained why he—the man who was practically surgically attached to his phone—had failed to notice it had been out of power for hours.

AUDREY LAY ON HER back with the sheet pulled up to cover her breasts and stared up at the ceiling fan, which was turning so slowly she could count each rotation. One, two, three, four, five. It was oddly hypnotizing. She could almost forget that she had, yet again, ended up in bed with Coop on her
lunch hour. And this time, they hadn’t even gotten to the lunch part of the date.