Goodbye To All That (12 page)

“But first-graders make ashtrays out of clay. It’s what they do. They can’t master a pottery wheel at that age.”

He managed a tentative smile. As long as his daughters weren’t smoking, they could make any damned thing they wanted in art. “So my mother didn’t tell you anything?”

“No,” Brooke replied, adding grimly, “Your parents promised to watch the girls when we go to Nevis. How is that going to work out if they’re divorced?”

“Oh, Christ. Nevis.”

“I know it sounds selfish, Doug, but we booked that trip months ago and your parents
promised
.”

“Shit.” His mother would be living in some dingy apartment somewhere. Were his daughters supposed to stay in that dingy apartment with her? Or at the house with his father, unsupervised because his father would be at work? Hell, his mother would be at work, too. “My mother’s got a job,” he told Brooke.

“She mentioned that during the drive. You’ll have to convince her to take that week off.”

A week’s vacation seemed doable. Maybe he could cajole his mother. For the sake of her two beloved granddaughters, who adored her so very much. Maybe the girls could make clay ashtrays for her at school. That would melt her heart. “This whole situation is so stupid. I don’t know why my mother is moving out on my father. She always seems happy.”

Brooke pulled away and gave him a look that said,
Are you insane?

What had he missed? He saw more of his father than his mother, thanks to their golf games and occasional lunches when Doug found himself in the Longwood district of Boston, home of Beth Israel Deaconess, the hospital where his father’s practice was located. But whenever he saw his mother, she seemed happy enough to him. She always gave him a hug and a kiss and fixed meals she knew he’d enjoy, and she asked him about his work and then fussed over the girls. Wasn’t that the definition of happiness for a grandmother? A chance to cook and spoil her precious granddaughters?

“How do you know she’s been unhappy?” he asked.

Brooke opened her mouth, then shut it again and leaned back into him, her hair stroking his chin and her shoulder digging pleasantly into his chest. “She never glows. She always looks tired and drab.”

“That’s just the way she is. She’s never been a glamour queen.”

“It’s not about glamour,” Brooke said, sounding a touch impatient. “It’s about having energy and enthusiasm. Maybe you didn’t notice because you’re always with your father.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a matter of people only seeing what they want to see.”

Was that what Brooke thought of him? That he saw only what he wanted to see? He had perfect vision, damn it—thanks to the skilled surgery of Barry Steinmetz, one of his closest friends since their med-school days and one of the finest Lasik surgeons Doug knew, other than himself. If his mother had been drab or unenthusiastic, his 20/20 vision would have picked up on it.

Certainly his 20/20 vision would pick up on any drabness or lack of enthusiasm in Brooke, wouldn’t it? He didn’t have to worry about her not being happy. She glowed all the time.

“You would tell me if you were unhappy, wouldn’t you?” he asked, aware of the anxiety filtering through his voice.

Brooke nestled closer to him and sipped her wine. “Of course I would,” she said. “I think I might be happier if I had bangs.”

He wasn’t sure if she was joking, but he decided to pretend she was. “If you want bangs,” he murmured, “get bangs.”

Jill wasn’t so sure about Luc, but she had to concede that Melissa was sad. She’d whimpered through dinner—an assortment of take-out dishes Gordon and Noah had picked up from Bangkok Palace. Wielding her chopsticks and stuffing her face with pad thai and chicken with lemon grass, Melissa had sniveled about how children of divorce had so much more trouble maintaining their faith in love, and maybe she should just give up on true love, and while she was at it maybe she should forget about ever having children because she would never want to cause another human being the pain she was suffering right now.

When she’d confessed her doubts about true love, Luc had glanced at her, looped an arm around her shoulders and given her a squeeze. Then he’d winked at Noah—he did have strikingly pretty blue eyes—and whispered, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Girls can be a little dramatic sometimes.”

Noah had nodded knowingly. “You’re telling me?”

Gordon had laughed, and Jill had sublimated the urge to throw the container of sticky rice at his head by grabbing her can of Diet Coke and chugging enough soda to make her eyes tear from the carbonation.

After dinner, Abbie had retreated to her bedroom to text her friend Caitlin, and the guys had retired to the family room to watch something suitably manly on television, leaving Jill and Melissa to clean up the dinner things. Not an onerous task, given that Jill hadn’t even bothered to empty the waxy white cartons from Bangkok Palace into serving bowls. All she had to do was stack the plates in the dishwasher. Melissa’s help had consisted of gathering the cartons, napkins and chopsticks and depositing them in the trash.

Melissa had poured herself a glass of wine—Jill foolishly had stayed with Diet Coke; if she’d had some wine instead, she might be asleep by now, or at least not fretting over the engorged state of her bladder—and leaned against the counter near Jill’s desk. “Do you think Dad’s having an affair?” she’d asked.

Jill had mentally reviewed the family conference at her dining room table that afternoon. She’d sensed undercurrents, but not an adultery undercurrent. Her father’s hair had been as gray as always, no sign that he was coloring it to look younger. No updated fashion sense. No cockiness, forgive the pun.

She’d shaken her head. “How about Mom?” she’d asked. “You think
she’s
having an affair?”

Melissa had winced. “Mom? Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. Why can’t Mom have an affair?”

“Because she’s
 . . .
Mom.” Melissa’s eyes had welled up. She’d pulled a paper napkin from the popsicle-stick napkin holder Noah had made last year at summer camp and blown her nose into it. “She’s in her sixties, Jill.”

“Women can’t have sex in their sixties?”

“I don’t know if they can’t. But why would they want to? I mean, their bodies are all
 . . .
you know.
Old
.”

“There was a time I thought thirty was old,” Jill had remarked pointedly. Melissa might be the baby of the family, but she’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday more than a year ago.

“It is old,” Melissa had said glumly. “I feel old. All I do is work. Then I come home, open a can of soup and spend the evening juggling numbers to see if there’s any way in hell I can afford to buy an apartment. You and Doug own your own homes. I want to own property, too.”

“You’re earning a fortune,” Jill had pointed out.

“Not a big enough fortune.”

“Maybe you need to hook up with a guy who earns a fortune, too. Two salaries are better than one.” As if the money Jill earned writing catalogue copy represented the difference between her family’s being able to live in a house in the Boston suburbs and a cardboard box on a street corner in Mission Hill.

Melissa’s gaze had drifted toward the door to the family room, through which the guy she was currently hooked up with had disappeared not long ago. “Luc earns a salary,” she’d said. “I’m not sure exactly how much, but I think it’s pretty good.”

“He’s a hairdresser.” Jill had learned this over dinner and had done an estimable job of pretending she thought that was terrific.

“At one of the city’s top salons.”

A top salon. Jill had supposed she ought to be impressed. “Is it serious, you and him?”

Melissa had sighed. “We haven’t known each other long enough to be serious. But he’s gorgeous and sweet, and the sex is fabulous. And look at my hair. He’s a magician.”

Jill had shaken the excess water from her hands and reached for a dishtowel to dry them. “Is the sex so fabulous you’d still want to be sleeping with him when you were sixty-four?”

“My body’s going to be disgusting by then,” Melissa had moaned.

Jill had inspected her sister’s figure. Not a perfect ten, but at least an eight. Maybe a nine. She’d inherited their mother’s round hips and sloping shoulders, which some men loved. Jill used to despise her own physique, which she believed resembled a tootsie-roll more than an hourglass. After two pregnancies, though, she’d decided to be grateful she weighed only five pounds more than she had when she’d met Gordon. There were things in life worth stressing over—like your parents’ marital woes, or your daughter’s bat mitzvah, or whether writing catalogue copy was
really
a job—and things not worth worrying about—like whether your shoulders were too square or whether you weighed five pounds more than you used to.

Of course, once she quit Diet Coke, she’d probably gain more weight. Unless she drank only water.

“I always thought you’d wind up with a fellow lawyer,” she’d told Melissa as she’d lifted the dishwasher door and clicked it shut.

“Ugh. Lawyers are boring.” Melissa had wrinkled her nose.

“You’re not boring.”

“I am. I worry about when Luc’s finally going to realize how boring I am. I could never have a relationship with another lawyer. If we had a child, it might wind up inheriting boring lawyer genes from both of us. Like Tay-Sachs disease or something.” She’d sighed and glanced toward the ceiling. “What’s the point, anyway? I mean, you can be together for forty years and suddenly decide you’re sick of each other. Maybe I should just skip the whole falling-in-love thing. I could have a baby through artificial insemination and the hell with marriage.”

Jill hadn’t known how to respond. Should she lecture Melissa on how much work a child was—and double the work if you didn’t have a husband to share it with? Nah. Even in these enlightened times, most husbands didn’t come close to shouldering a full half of the childcare burden. They changed a diaper and spent the rest of the day boasting about how helpful they were. They coached the kids’ soccer teams but left their wives to oversee the kids’ baths and take them shopping for shoes and check their homework.

Instead, she’d said, “Do you think Mom and Dad still love each other?”

“Can you love someone if you’re sick of him?”

Jill had thought for a minute before answering. “Probably.”

She wasn’t sick of Gordon. He was sweet and smart and adorably dense, and he’d even taken Noah shopping for shoes once. The two of them had come home beaming over their purchase of a one-hundred-nineteen-dollar pair of sneakers that Noah had outgrown in less than three months.