I'm So Happy for You (26 page)

It was hot and humid and hazy outside—the kind of August day when the sun feels like a vise clamping down on your back. Wendy
emerged from the subway feeling as if her dress had melded with her flesh. She found Paige seated at a café table in back.
Amid a sea of shorts and tank tops, she wasn’t hard to miss—in her linen suit and two-tone Chanel sling-backs. “Paige!” Wendy
called and waved to her across the room. “I’m just getting a coffee.” She motioned at the counter.

Paige waved back, before returning to her
Wall Street Journal
“Weekend Journal.”

In time, Wendy joined her at the table, paper cup in hand. “You look so nice!” she said, thinking she might as well get the
conversation off to a friendly start. “Are you going somewhere afterward?”

Paige smiled unctuously as she laid down her newspaper. “As a matter of fact, I’m headed to a matinee performance of
Aida.
Truth be told, Broadway musicals aren’t really my thing, but the proceeds go to the Spinal Bifida Association.”

“Oh—cool!” Wendy nodded. “Well, maybe it will be fun?”

“Perhaps, but that’s not really the point,” Paige snapped back.

“Right,” said Wendy. “Meanwhile, how’s it going with Jeremy?”

“How’s
what
going?” asked Paige, her head cocked and brow furrowed, as if she hadn’t understood the question.

“Your relationship,” answered Wendy, who was instantly reminded of one of the many things that drove her crazy about Paige—namely,
her refusal to disseminate anything more than superficial information about herself, even as she systematically mined others
for their darkest secrets.

“Oh.” Paige tilted her head backward. “Well, since you ask, yes, we’re having a very nice time together.” Again, she assumed
a tight-lipped smile.

“Well, that’s great,” said Wendy.

“Unfortunately, I’m not here to talk about Jeremy and myself,” said Paige, flaring her nostrils and lowering her chin. As
if she had the misfortune in this world of having been anointed an emissary of those concerns that others would prefer to
overlook but that Paige, in good conscience, couldn’t bring herself to ignore. “Let me begin by thanking you for meeting me
on such short notice,” she went on. “Please understand, as well, that this is very awkward for me.” Wendy was stumped. Was
Paige having trouble getting pregnant herself? Was she secretly hankering to become a left-wing journalist? “But my conscience
is telling me that I need to say something. So”—she took a deep breath through her nose—“as you may or may not know, Jeremy
does a certain amount of handyman-type work around Daphne and Jonathan’s house. Last week he was hanging some blinds in Daphne’s
home office upstairs. She’d left her laptop out. The screen saver was most likely on, since Daphne hadn’t occupied the room
in what Jeremy estimated to be at least a half hour and possibly as much as an hour. However, as he climbed a chair to better
reach the window, he knocked up against her desk. The desktop on her computer popped back into focus—”

“What’s this all about?” Wendy couldn’t stop herself from interrupting. When Paige felt she had something important to relay—as
she apparently did now—she talked incredibly slowly. Wendy found herself (a) having trouble concentrating on the trajectory
of Paige’s narrative, and (b) growing crazy with impatience.

“Please! Let me finish,” Paige barked and scowled, as if Wendy had just broken the Eleventh Commandment: Though Shalt Not
Interrupt Paige Ryan. She sighed punitively before continuing: “I want to preface what I’m going to say next by attesting
to the fact that Jeremy is not, by nature, a nosy person. Far from it. In fact, he goes out of his way, I would say, to mind
his own business. I also want to add that I have not discussed what I’m about to tell you with Daphne. Not yet, at least.
After careful consideration, I decided that the prudent thing to do was to approach you first—”

“PAIGE!” Wendy yelled. She couldn’t take it anymore. It was as if her request had accomplished nothing more than to further
retard the pace of Paige’s speechifying. “PLEASE! I’m begging you. Where is this going? I have laundry to do.”

Paige shot Wendy a fiery look before she announced, “As I was SAYING, the email literally appeared before Jeremy’s eyes.”

“What email?” asked Wendy.

“I’m about to tell you,” said Paige, jaw clenched. “There was an email opened on Daphne’s computer, and it was to your husband.”
She glared at Wendy so intensely that Wendy almost jumped backward in her seat.

“So?” said Wendy, bristling at the implication of impropriety even as it hit an exposed nerve. “They’re friends. Why shouldn’t
they email?”

Paige took another exaggerated breath through her nose. “There was an email from Daphne to your husband alluding to the fact
that Daphne’s unborn child does not genetically belong to her husband, Jonathan.”

“What?” said Wendy, squinting in confusion.

Her neck elongated, Paige reached her right hand across the table and placed it on Wendy’s forearm. “I’m sorry to have to
be the one telling you this.”

“Telling me what?!” Wendy could feel her heartbeat accelerating.

“The email indirectly alluded to the fact that the baby’s father is your husband, Adam.”

Wendy’s head had begun to spin. Or was it the room? All the laptops and coffee mugs and muffin wrappers appeared suddenly
to be sailing through the air. “Indirectly alluded?! What the hell does that mean?” She shook Paige’s hand off her arm.

“Just what I said,” said Paige.

“You said nothing,” Wendy shot back.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Wendy.”

“Messenger? Messenger of what? Either tell me what the email said or I’m leaving!”

Paige looked away. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to reveal any more than I already have.”

“You show up here to tell me my husband’s impregnated my former best friend, but you can’t go into details,” cried Wendy.
“This is officially
insane!!
”

Paige let her lids close halfway over her eyes, as if she could hardly stand to bear witness to her own truth-telling and
sighed wearily.
“Living in fear that J is going to find out that Peanut isn’t his,”
she began in a blank tone.
“Then what? Just feel like running away now. What are we going to do?”
Her recitation complete, she clasped her hands in her lap and cast her eyes downward, the faintest hint of a smile on her
lips. Or had Wendy dreamt that last detail up?

Wendy felt that at any moment, her head might lift off from her body. She couldn’t be sure that her heart was still in her
chest. Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t hide their dampness. Again, Paige reached a hand across the table. This time,
Wendy lacked the energy to fight her off. “I got divorced, Wendy,” Paige offered in a newly oily tone. “It’s not that bad.”

“Who said anything about divorce?” said Wendy, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

“Wendy, your former best friend is having a baby with your husband. Do you really plan on staying with him?”

“You don’t know that for sure,” said Wendy, but her voice trembled as she spoke. (Her voice belied her conviction that Paige
Ryan was a pathological liar who couldn’t be trusted not to poison her coffee.) “And would you please stop calling me
Wendy?
”

“As you like,” said Paige. Apparently miffed, she abruptly removed her hand from Wendy’s arm.

Her limbs returned to her, Wendy took the opportunity to flee the premises. “I have to go,” she said, rising from her chair
and hooking her bag over her shoulder. “Have fun at
Aida
.”

• • •

The sun seemed even fiercer than it had twenty minutes earlier. It bounced off the parked cars and store windows, skewing
Wendy’s vision. All the passersby on the sidewalk looked like gargoyles. She stepped off the curb without realizing it was
there, jolting her insides. Of the many swirling thoughts that occupied Wendy’s head, the most dominant one was that she needed
to reach Adam—to have him remind her that Paige Ryan was not her friend, never had been. She dialed his cell phone as she
walked. But it rang straight to voice mail. She called again. He still wasn’t picking up. Wary of leaving Paige’s accusation
in a message—and thinking Adam might already have arrived in Newton—Wendy dialed her in-laws’ house.

But Phyllis seemed confused by Wendy’s question. “Adam?” she said.

“Isn’t he coming to stay with you?” asked Wendy.

“Yes, but we’re not expecting him until the ninth!” Wendy was baffled. Had she misheard him? Had he made other plans for the
weekend? Her brain began searching for innocent explanations, but all it came up with was nefarious ones. Meanwhile, Phyllis
had begun to conjure nightmares of her own. “God, you don’t think something happened to him,” she said with a little gasp.

Wendy could hear the panic building in her mother-in-law’s voice. She wished she’d never called. She barely had the energy
to deal with her own upset and confusion, let alone someone else’s. At the same time, she felt a sudden, overwhelming urge
to surrender the last remaining shard of her privacy to this woman who had been like a second mother to her for the past eight
years. Or so she liked to imagine. “I think he’s having an affair,” she choked out. “There’s no other explanation.”

“What?!” cried Phyllis.

“I think Adam’s sleeping with my friend Daphne—or, I guess I should say, former friend.”

“The girl who’s always having affairs with married men?!”

“She’s married now herself.”

“Wendy, that doesn’t sound like something my Adam would do.”

It was her mother-in-law’s use of “my” that took Wendy aback, made her think she’d overstepped (and now it was too late to
retreat, too late ever to undo the damage). “I know it doesn’t,” she said, still determined to make her case. “But a friend
of Daphne’s just told me—a friend told me that Daphne is pregnant by Adam.”

“What?!” screeched Phyllis, sounding, in truth, not entirely unhappy at the possibility.

“I don’t have any proof,” said Wendy, realizing that, for better or worse, she only had one mother after all.

“Well, Wendy, you’ve left me thoroughly shaken!” declared Phyllis.

“I’m sorry,” said Wendy, her eyes again filling with tears—this time at the thought that she was losing everyone who’d ever
cared about her. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I know you didn’t. I’m sorry for you, too. I just don’t know what to believe right now.”

“To be honest, I don’t, either.”

“If you hear from Adam before we do, will you please tell him to call home?” asked Phyllis.

“Of course,” said Wendy.

She must have been gripping the phone too tightly. Her hand and ear were aching when she hung up.

• • •

By coincidence, Wendy found herself standing in front of the old dive where she and Adam had had their wedding party almost
five years before. She walked in and took a seat at the bar. At the very least, the place presented respite from the sun;
it was so dark in there that it might as well have been nighttime. Wendy ordered a screwdriver—it seemed like the kind of
drink you ordered when your marriage was uncovered to be a sham—and looked around her. A handful of winos sat slumped over
their stools, their creased faces obscured in shadow. One glanced curiously in her direction but, to her relief, said nothing.

As Wendy waited for her drink, she caught sight of the booth where she and Adam had huddled into the early hours of that night.
Its vinyl upholstery was peeling. The wood table was all scratched up. It was a far cry from the Prospect Park boathouse.
Even so, Wendy recalled the evening as being romantic in its own way, romantic because she and Adam had held hands beneath
the table as they waited for the songs to play whose identifying letters and number they’d punched into the jukebox—back when
songs meant everything, were more important than money or status, summed up their shared ironic take on the world as an exercise
in futility, if occasionally an amusing, bittersweet one. Now Wendy wasn’t sure what—or whom—to believe.

If Paige was to be trusted, there was a way in which Wendy felt flattered to think that Beautiful Daphne Sonnenberg née Uberoff
found her husband that desirable and had gone to such lengths to disguise the fact. It meant that on some level, Daphne must
have been jealous of Wendy, a novel and delicious concept. Wendy also found it titillating to imagine herself embroiled in
such High Drama: who would have thought that Boring Reliable Wendy Murman would ever occupy one of the points in a love triangle?
The spurned woman as opposed to the “other woman,” but still. A player. A leading character.

But it was not a play. That was the problem. It was real life. Just as, if Paige was to be believed, there was real life—flesh,
blood, toenails, eyeballs—growing inside Daphne; real life that derived its genetic coding from Adam, life that should have
been growing inside Wendy. It was this part of the story that she found intolerable: not just the vile image of Daphne opening
her legs to a heaving, overly grateful Adam (so Wendy imagined), but the fact that a human being was to be born whom Wendy
would be unable to hate, since babies were by nature innocent, none of them having asked to be put here, yet who would serve
as an endless, agonizing reminder of Adam and Daphne’s betrayal—a reminder that in all likelihood would outlive Wendy. The
earth didn’t seem large enough to accommodate both of them.

At the same time, Wendy remained in doubt regarding the veracity of Paige’s story. Even if Adam had been secretly pining for
Daphne all these years, Wendy still had trouble imagining that Daphne felt the same way about him. She tried to avail herself
of the notion that Adam was virile or dynamic in some way she’d never noticed—or had stopped noticing, this many years into
marriage—but she wasn’t convinced. Adam’s attributes aside, he was still short and unemployed, and Daphne had always favored
tall guys with fancy careers—even if, admittedly, she had a soft spot for married men.

But how, then, to explain Daphne’s movie treatment? And now Adam’s disappearance? There were too many coincidences, and all
of them led to one shocking conclusion. As Wendy exited the bar, she called Adam’s phone yet again. He still wasn’t picking
up.