I'm So Happy for You (24 page)

“God—don’t remind me,” said Audrey, rolling her eyes.

There was more giggling.

“Yeah, but, you know, Brad kind of screwed Paige over with the yoga girl,” Daphne interjected. It occurred suddenly to Wendy
that Daphne never said a bad word about anybody. Could it be that she was the only loyal one among them? “I mean, it was pretty
obvious Paige was in love with him all those years,” Daphne continued while unwrapping a deep-pile-velour receiving blanket.
She rubbed it against her cheek. “Could this be any softer? Hannah, you are too sweet!”

“Danny and I got the same one as a gift when Zola was born, and I swear she spent half the day rolling around on that thing,”
said Hannah.

Next up was a humongous silver box with cascading blue ribbons. “It’s just a little something,” said Courtney, who—was it
possible?—was nursing Miles again.

Daphne untied the package, opened the box, and lifted out a large wicker basket topped with confetti. Reaching into the fluff,
she emerged moments later with a pair of miniature red-and-white-striped pants, which were attached to a rope cord in the
manner of a clothesline with plain wooden clips. “
How
cute are these?” said Daphne. She began to pull the cord, but it extended farther than her arm allowed. So she stood up and
began to walk backward toward the door, rope in hand. In the process, she revealed a matching red-and-white-striped sweatshirt.
Daphne kept walking, and the tiny outfits kept coming, one after another after another, some decorated with stripes, others
with lollipops and teddy bears and little lambs. There must have been a dozen of them. The gaggle gasped and ohmygodded. “Courtney,
I can’t BELIEEEEEEEEEEVE you!!” Daphne squealed. “This is just
BEYOND!
I mean, this is, like, the most insane present EVER. And on top of the Diaper Genie I registered for? It’s too much.…”

The dull ache that had settled in Wendy’s temples during the earlier part of the afternoon had now given way to a pounding
headache. She felt a burning sensation behind her eyes. Then she noticed that her present rested on top of what was left of
the pile. On account of the money and effort she’d put into organizing the shower, Wendy had felt justified in buying Daphne
a token gift. In light of Courtney’s extravagance, however, she was seized by a familiar fear of looking cheap. “Wait, give
that to me,” she said, lunging for the package. “I think I left the price tag on.” Wendy pried the present out of Daphne’s
hand. Then, yet again, she fled the room.

• • •

This time, Wendy walked past the kitchen and into the bedroom, past the bed on which she and Adam had failed to create a human
life, and into the bathroom. She locked the door and sat down on the toilet. Through the shower window, she could hear the
relentless whine of highway traffic. How many cars there were, she thought—and how many people inside them, each with their
own stories of heartache and triumph and disappointment. And how random it was that she’d been assigned this life. Half-imagining
she was Daphne and half-believing her own excuse, Wendy began to loosen the tissue on her gift, carefully unfastening the
tape so she could seal it back up.

The baby “sleep sack” she uncovered looked even less substantial than she remembered it being. Lifting it by its minuscule
shoulders, Wendy thought back to the infant who might have filled it, the infant she could have had while still in college.
Back then, it had never even occurred to her to go through with the pregnancy. It was ironic to think about now, ironic without
being sad. It was too many years later for that. She’d only just started the spring semester of her senior year. By the time
she missed her period, she and Evan Suarez had already broken up. After all this time, it was mostly Daphne’s absence in the
aftermath that had stayed with her. Wendy had asked Daphne to come to the clinic with her—she’d trusted no one else with the
information that she was pregnant—but Daphne had been having one of her periodic “migraines.” Wendy still recalled the pity
in the nurses’ eyes when she’d asked them if they had the phone number of a taxi service, the shame she’d felt at being there
alone.

Why couldn’t Daphne just have taken two Tylenol? Wendy now wondered. And what if the truth was that Daphne couldn’t bear for
anyone else to be the center of attention—not just the one with all the luck, but the one with all the pain, too? She pictured
Daphne in the Wonder Woman costume she’d worn for Halloween that fall, pretending to be embarrassed about how short her short-shorts
were. (“I feel like the whole world is staring at my butt!” Wendy recalled Daphne saying.) She longed suddenly for revenge.

She knew it was an immature impulse. The right thing to do was to wait for another day, when the two were alone and Wendy
was feeling calmer. Then, in an open, nonaccusatory way, she’d share her hurt feelings with Daphne, remembering to begin all
her sentences with “I,” as opposed to “You,” as in, “You’re a duplicitous megalomaniac.” Marcia used to encourage Wendy to
“own” her negative emotions. As if they were handbags or cars or pets. But it seemed to Wendy that Marcia had missed the point:
there was no use in acting responsibly toward people when your goal was to punish and humiliate them.

Just then, Wendy noticed a black pen lying on the windowsill. No doubt Adam had been doing Sudoku, his favorite new time waster.
Maybe she would write something on the sleep sack, she thought. Only, what? Wendy lifted the pen off the sill and lowered
herself onto the bath mat. Then she closed the toilet seat and laid the sleep sack on top of it. Her heart was beating madly,
and she hardly knew what she was doing as she scrawled the words VANITY PROJECT in capital letters across the front of the
garment. A dim voice in her head said, “Wendy—you’re going insane.” Not unconvinced by her own genius, she ignored it and
rewrapped the present.

• • •

Wendy entered the living room to find Daphne saying, “He is too adorable,” about yet another teddy bear with a grosgrain ribbon
tied around its neck. She’d finally exhausted the pile of presents. Wendy placed her gift at Daphne’s feet and once again
claimed her seat on the arm of the sofa. It seemed to her as if twenty minutes passed—though it was probably only two—before
Daphne lifted the package into her lap. “It’s just a little something,” Wendy told her, just as Courtney had.

“Wen, you really didn’t have to get me anything,” Daphne said. She began to unstick the tape that Wendy had only just refastened.
She lifted the sleep sack into the air. “Oohh,” she started to say. Then she fell silent, her face frozen midway between a
smile and the vacant stare of the stricken.

“Are you okay, Daf?” asked Sara.

Blood rushed to Wendy’s cheeks.

Daphne slowly refolded the sleep sack and placed it back in its tissue paper. Then she began to breathe in an exaggerated
fashion, her jaw extended, her mouth ajar. “So let me get this straight,” she began in a tremulous voice. “Just because you’re
Little Miss Political-Action-Career-Woman and I’m not, that gives you the right to mock the greatest achievement of my adult
life?”

Wendy felt as if she’d walked onto the stage of the wrong play, only to find her lines useless. She wanted to yell, “How do
you think I feel being the only one here without a baby?” But it occurred to her suddenly that what she’d done was more heinous
than anything Daphne was guilty of. “It was just a stupid joke,” she mumbled instead.

“Hilarious,” said Daphne in a scathing voice. She turned to the rest of them. “In case you’re wondering what happened, my
old and supposedly dear friend Wendy has taken it upon herself to inscribe the phrase ‘vanity project’ on the sleep suit she
intends my infant son or daughter to wear.”

There were murmurs of confusion and disapproval.

“That is so psycho,” muttered Courtney.

Daphne repeated the phrase in a caustic tone. Then she let loose a withering laugh. But whatever had amused her didn’t last
long. Her eyes were as slender as crescent moons when she turned back to Wendy and asked, “So—what?—is that supposed to be
some kind of critique of my personality? Like you think I do everything I do just to flatter myself—is that it? Or is it just
that I’m not allowed to have children because you can’t get pregnant?”

Wendy felt like crawling under the Indian bedspread that doubled as the sofa slipcover (and upon which Daphne currently sat).
What if Daphne was right? she wondered. What if Wendy was just jealous? And what if Daphne really did have a debilitating
migraine that day back in college? As Wendy stared into her best friend’s twisted face, she began to doubt the content of
her own rage as well. In truth, the feeling Daphne increasingly elicited was older than their friendship—the feeling that
no matter how far Wendy came, she’d never catch up. She’d always be racing to board a train that had already left the station.
In her mind’s eye, she could see the passengers in the back car, their noses pressed to the glass and resembling pigs’ snouts,
their mouths stretched wide with laughter, their hands waving good-bye.
See you later, if you ever get there,
she heard them calling to her.

Wendy doubted she ever
would
get there. That was her fear, and her fear had become real to her. Once, she’d seen life as a wonderful absurdity. Now the
race to excel and to acquire had become all-consuming. Even humor had fallen out of her repertoire. “Really—I didn’t mean
anything by it,” she offered helplessly.

Without explanation, Daphne rose from her seat and strode toward the kitchen. Moments later, she reappeared with Wendy’s two-pound
bag of flour pressed to her perfect breasts. Wendy had meant to put the flour back in the cupboard before her guests arrived—she’d
used it to make the cookies—but hadn’t found the time. “Honestly?” Daphne began again in a shrill voice while waddling back
toward Wendy. “For fifteen fucking years I’ve been putting up with your hostility. And not just putting up with it, but trying
to make you happy, when I haven’t been busy tiptoeing around you, worried I was going to say the wrong thing and insult you.
Your insecurity has been, like, a full-time job. And what’s my reward? You gave the most obnoxious wedding toast in the history
of wedding toasts. I’m sorry to have
burdened
you with my problems all these years. I thought we were the kind of friends who could tell each other everything, but I guess
not. I also thought you’d be happy for me when things finally started going well in my life. But you’ve been a complete
cunt
to me ever since I met Jonathan”—in her peripheral vision, Wendy could see Courtney covering Miles’s ears—“and you know what?
I’ve had it! FUCK”—she paused for effect—“YOU! Fuck your stupid baby shower. And fuck your chocolate chip cookies.” Daphne
took another step toward Wendy. Then she overturned the flour bag on Wendy’s head, momentarily blinding her to all reality
but the mushroom cloud that swirled around her head like a nimbus of scorn.

• • •

Wendy could only barely make out the identities of the women who rushed to Daphne’s aid. Not that Wendy could entirely blame
them. Daphne was the one carrying innocent life, while Wendy’s belly was filled with nothing more sacred than sangria. Plus,
Daphne had begun to weep, while Wendy stood motionless and quiet and, for the moment at least, unable to form an intelligent
thought.

“Daffie, it’s going to be all right,” Wendy heard Jenny Kenar(?) saying.

“Do you want some water?” asked Hannah Dingo(?).

“Daphne, we’re taking you home,” announced Courtney. (There was no mistaking her snarl.)

“Okay,” Daphne choked out between sobs.

Finally, the mushroom cloud began to dissipate, and Wendy’s guests again became recognizable to her. Daphne was already halfway
to the door, her slender arms looped through Alyssa’s and Courtney’s. The latter held Miles against her hip as if he were
a designer handbag and stared backward at Wendy as if she were a suspected mugger. Jenny Kenar, Jenn Gilmore, Hannah, and
Audrey stuffed Daphne’s presents into shopping bags. Pamela, Gretchen, and Sara and their respective offspring lingered between
the hall and the living room, looking uncomfortable. Naturally, Lucas had begun to cry again. “Do you want help cleaning up?”
asked Pamela, clearly the most traumatized of the bunch, if only because conflict was alien to her.

“It’s fine, really,” Wendy told her. “You should all go home.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Wendy was thinking that she needed water. Flour had become affixed to the roof of her mouth.

She was also thinking that she couldn’t wait for everyone to leave, especially the babies. Somehow, with their googly eyes
and utter incomprehension, they made her the most ashamed of all.

T
O
W
ENDY’S SURPRISE,
after she cleaned up the apartment, then herself in the shower, the flour pouring off her head in creamy rivulets, she felt
okay—not great, by any means, but not terrible, either. Not as bad as she might have thought she’d feel. She felt like a pariah,
of course. At the same time there was a certain relief in having disgraced herself and in having given up all claims to respectability
or decorousness. It was so exhausting trying to get along with everyone all the time.

Wendy felt relieved, as well, to think she’d never again have to admire Daphne’s house, husband, or appearance; never have
to tell her how unbelievably adorable her newborn was sure to be, either. In retrospect, it struck Wendy that their friendship
might have ended years earlier had Wendy not felt obligated to stick around. In light of Daphne’s recent outburst, however,
that sense of duty had fallen away; there was no need to feel responsible for someone who hated your guts.

It was the sight of Adam walking in the door at six o’clock that once again filled Wendy with doubt and shame. “How was the
game?” she said, before he could ask her about the shower.

“Great,” he said. “Delgado hit a two-run homer in the ninth and won it for New York. How was the babyfest?”