The Transformation of Things (6 page)

Six

M
y mother had a soft voice, so that even when she was yelling it sounded like she was saying something sweet. After she died, I would dream about her, hear her voice talking to me in my sleep, and it always was incredibly soothing, until I woke up. I guess that’s the way it is with dreams, they always seem much more surreal when you think about them after the fact than they do in the moment.

So maybe that’s why I felt so unsettled, sitting there the next morning, reading over the dream of Lisa that I’d transcribed last night into my reporter’s notebook. Or maybe it was because it was a Wednesday, and I was supposed to play tennis at the club, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be welcome there anymore, that I was not expected to show up.

Will had taken to the couch, in his sweatpants and worn gray sweatshirt. He was flipping between ESPN and FOX Sports as I closed the reporter’s notebook and checked the
fridge. The only thing I had for dinner was a chicken, which had expired yesterday. It was unlike me to let things spoil in the refrigerator. I was usually on top of these things, but last night Will had been in his study and I’d made only a can of soup for myself.

I took the chicken out of the fridge and threw it in the trash can, right on top of Lisa’s rotting cake. “Will, you didn’t take the trash out last night.”

He didn’t answer so I slammed things around, making way more noise than necessary as I took the bag out and took it to the garage. “I’m going to the market,” I announced, when I got back. No answer. “Will,” I said louder.

He paused the TV. “What?”

“I’m going to the market. Do you want anything?”

He shook his head and put the TV back on.

I drove a little too fast to Whole Foods, accidentally ran a red light, and nearly swiped an old lady pulling into the parking lot. Still, she was in the middle of the lane, so I honked at her, only to see her give me the finger. I caught a glimpse of her, and even though I knew it wasn’t, she looked oddly like my father’s girlfriend, Sharon.

Maybe it was the gesture, something Sharon might do. But no, Sharon was much more backhanded than that, and I felt thankful that Deerfield news did not readily wing its way down to Boca. The last thing I needed was Sharon on my case about it.

As soon as I walked through the automatic double doors, I saw Amber and Bethany in their tennis whites, standing at the line by the coffee kiosk. I willed them not to look my way, not to see me here, unshowered, with my hair in a messy ponytail,
wearing only gray yoga pants and a black hooded sweatshirt. I usually didn’t leave the house this way, but I’d been so annoyed with Will that I’d wanted to make a statement, wanted to storm out in a huff so he would notice. Though I doubted he had.

And then, just as I’d almost gotten safely by them, Amber looked right at me, then looked away. She elbowed Bethany, who looked up, offered a half smile that looked more like a grimace (or maybe it was just too much Botox?), and then pretended to be incredibly interested in her soy latte.

I didn’t want to make a scene, and I didn’t want to run into anyone else either, so I turned and quickly walked out. Then I got in the car and drove to the Acme in Oak Glen, by Kelly’s house, where I knew I wouldn’t be able to find the organic foods I usually coveted, but where I also knew not a single person there would recognize me.

And so the days went.

Will on the couch during the day, in his study at night, not even coming out to eat, or at least not when I was home or awake, while I invented reasons to leave the house. Acme every morning, and then afterward, sometimes, a drive. Sometimes I drove by Kelly’s house and thought about stopping in. She’d been calling me every day, just to see how things were going, but I’d been lying, telling her everything was fine, fine, fine. “A job does not define a person,” I’d told her, trying my best to sound like I believed it.

“I know that, Jen,” she’d said right back. “But still—”

Her
still
hung thick in the air between us, and I let it sit there, not bothering to explain more.

But here, a week and a half later, Will’s stubble had grown
so thick that it was starting to look like something resembling a beard, and I couldn’t be sure when he’d last taken a shower, much less shaved.

And then, as I left to go to Acme, I drove past the blue Daniels and Sons truck, waiting to turn into our driveway. I grimaced at the sight of it.

In the time between my mother’s cancer “scare” and her stage four diagnosis four years later, my father quit his job as an accountant and bought a small landscaping company that he’d renamed Daniels and Sons. Though it was clear he was never going to have any sons, he thought it added an air of longevity to the title.

I’m not sure my father knew anything about landscaping before he bought the company, but he did know something about business, so during the worst of my mother’s illness and then after her death, he threw himself into his work, growing the business from five employees to fifty. Daniels and Sons was a big name in Deerfield County now—I drove by those little blue trucks all the time, and they always made me feel unsettled. Made me remember the way my father had ignored us, the hours I was home alone after school and at night while my father worked and Kelly was out with Dave and then later off at college.

When my father retired six years ago, he gave the business to Dave. Just outright gave it to him, which Will told me was actually illegal for tax purposes. When I mentioned this to Kelly, she said, “So what the hell? Is he going to call the IRS or something?”

“No,” I said. “I just thought you should know.”

But my dad had wanted out, and Dave—the guy my dad said was the closest thing to a real son anyway, blatantly ignoring
the fact that Will and I had just gotten engaged—wanted the business to stay in the family. Not that Will would’ve wanted the business, but it still seemed like my dad should’ve given it some consideration.

Nope. One day he was the CEO of Daniels and Sons, and the next he was packing up for Boca with Sharon Wasserstein. And Dave and Kelly were proud business owners.

Under Dave, the business was doing well. Or so Kelly reported at regular intervals, as if I would care, as if it would mean something to me. It didn’t. After we moved to Deer-field, Will convinced me to hire them to mow our lawn, do our weeding, and plant our flowers, even though I had been strongly against it. “We can’t just go hire someone else,” Will had said. “Your sister would have a fit.”

“We wouldn’t have to tell her,” I said, but then reluctantly agreed. Still, I made a point of not being home on Wednesday mornings when they showed up.

But today when I saw the blue truck pull down the driveway, with the trailer attached, when I watched the two men hop out and take out the tractor and the rake, when I thought about Will inside, lying like a lump on our couch, I had an idea.

I dialed Kelly’s number on the drive to Acme, and as soon as she picked up, I said, “Will needs a job.” If Will had known what I was asking, I knew he would’ve been mad, and not the kind of mad that I wanted him to get, but the kind of mad where he just glared at me, and then continued to sulk on the couch.

“Oh, Jen.” Kelly sighed.

“It was Dad’s business,” I said. “Dad’s business,” I repeated for emphasis.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Come on, Kelly.” I didn’t want her to make me beg, to make me tell her how much Will needed it. The silence on her end was so unusual for her that it made my head hurt.

“Fine,” she finally said. “I’ll ask Dave.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And have him pretend like it was his idea, okay?”

“He hasn’t even said yes yet.” But we both knew he would. Dave was a good guy, and he always did whatever Kelly asked. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to go back to work?”

Truthfully, I hadn’t really thought about it, hadn’t thought beyond the drive to Acme and what I might make for dinner. “I’m considering my options,” I said, as if I had them.

After we hung up, I thought about it. What were my options? No baby. No friends. No charity auction to plan. Maybe going back to work
was
my only option now. I’d quit working just after we moved to Deerfield because it had seemed like too much to commute into the city every day, we hadn’t really needed the money, we thought we might have kids at some point “soon,” and I’d told Will I’d always wanted to write a novel. But all of that was only partly true, and though I knew Will knew it deep down, he never confronted me about it.

I thought about the feelings I’d had in my dream, as Lisa, and they felt oddly familiar. There was a certain numbness to my life in Deerfield, in my relationship with Will and my friends, even before everything that had happened in the last few weeks.

It occurred to me now how stupid I’d been to ever consider Amber and Bethany and the other ladies of the lunch club my friends—even my interactions with them had been superficial,
anesthetized—conversations about recipes and cleaning and gossip about the ladies who weren’t there. And then I thought about myself, sitting there the night before Will got indicted, watching that DVD alone, and I couldn’t even remember what it was I’d been watching. The way I’d felt then, the way I was feeling now—it was the same way I’d felt as Lisa, as if I were trying to walk through water.

I tried to remember the last time I hadn’t felt that, even the slightest hint of that fog, and I pictured myself sitting at my desk at
City Style,
Kat sitting across from me, laughing. Yes, I’d felt things then—joy and passion and hope and anger and sadness—and in a life in the suburbs, a life that was supposedly perfect, somehow those things had gotten lost.

Kat was an editor at
City Style
now, and I knew if anyone could get me my job back, she could. I pictured taking the train down to the city every day, entering back into the city life where most people wouldn’t know or care who Will was. And it did seem like a good idea. So as I perused the pathetic fruit aisle at Acme and longed for the organic section at Whole Foods, I decided to give her a call.

“Oh, hon,” Kat said as soon as she heard my voice. “Danny and I feel just awful about the whole thing.” To her credit, she didn’t mention that we hadn’t talked in at least two months, or that the last time we had talked, things had been awkward. We’d lost some of our connection, our commonality: She was a working mom now, with two little girls to worry about, and I’d felt all my talk about the lunch club and tennis had seemed silly and mundane in comparison to what she’d had to say.

“Then come up for a visit on Sunday,” I said, almost on a whim, wanting to see her, wanting to feel something again. “I’ll make that lamb roast that you like.”
As long as they selllamb roast at Acme,
I silently added, guessing that they actually might not. Well, they were bound to have some kind of roast here.

She paused for a minute, as if she was really considering saying no, as if she, like the women of Deerfield, wasn’t sure if she should be seen with me anymore, but then I heard someone else talking to her in the background, and I understood that I’d misjudged her. “What time do you want us?” she asked.

Seven

O
nce, years ago, I told Kat that I owed her for everything. It was the night before my wedding, when Kat had taken me to a bar in the city to celebrate my last night of being single. I’d had one too many Amaretto sours, and when I said it, I’d held on to her, hugged her, and whispered it loudly into her ear. But it wasn’t just the alcohol talking—I’d really meant it. Because Kat was the one who’d set me up with Will.

I met Kat when I first started working at
City Style,
and we became fast friends. Then she got engaged and went on a mission to pair up everyone she knew. Her fiancé, Danny Halloway, worked at FF&G, and his best friend, Will Levenworth, seemed like the perfect person to set me up with, or so she said, again and again and again, until I agreed, if only to shut her up.

“No blind dates,” I’d kept protesting, with an air of having had so many bad ones in the past that I was jaded. The truth was, I’d only ever been on one blind date before that one, but
it had been a doozy. Kelly had set me up with Dave’s friend’s brother—the guy drank so much that by the end of dinner he was slurring his words and trying to grab my breasts across the table.

“What the hell?” I said to Kelly afterward.

“How was I supposed to know he had a drinking problem?” she’d huffed. “He’s a perfectly nice guy sober.” As if the whole thing was my fault.

So I went into my date with Will with trepidation, a turtle-neck, and plenty of money for a cab home.

We went to the opening of an Italian restaurant, Il Romano, and I was supposed to be writing a review, so really it was a working dinner for me, something that made it feel less like a blind date, and not a total waste of time.

Will was early, already at the table, a little half-circle booth in the corner, when I arrived. I got a good look at him before he saw me. He was tall, with perfect, straight posture, thick brown curly hair, and, when I saw him up closer, these blue eyes that reminded me of the ocean on a perfect bright-sky day. He had broad shoulders, and a square jaw, and a really warm, infectious smile. A smile that made me feel at ease the moment that I met him.