The One That Got Away (3 page)

I stood and stared, watching him walk out of my life.

Or so I had thought.

Two days later, while I was busy faxing press releases, a call caught me off guard. I had almost missed it, its ring barely audible over the screeching fax machine.

“Hi, Abbey,” said a male voice, a bit timid. “This is Alex. We met the other day?”

“Hi! How are you?” I swiveled in my chair and leaned down, a finger over my other ear. This was important.

“They let me come back, so I guess I’m doing okay. And you?”

“Fine, thanks.” My voice was higher than I wished. I cleared my throat. He did the same but didn’t say anything else. The uncomfortable seconds ticked on. Finally, I broke the silence with a question: “Um, do you need some PR or something?”

“No,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I’m not calling for that, though I’m sure you would do a fantastic job. I… I was calling to see if you wanted to go out with me sometime. Maybe Friday night? My friend’s band is playing… and there’s this new Thai place nearby and…”

His voice began to fade in and out as I struggled with what to say. Even though every bone in my body yearned to say yes, even though I was twenty-three years old with every reason to play the field, and even thought this guy seemed nice, sweet, and more than a little sexy, I did what any good, rule-following girl would do. Told the truth.

“I’m really flattered,” I said, my heart thumping in protest, even my internal organs disbelieving what I was about to say. “But I have a boyfriend.”

“God, I’m so sorry I’m late,” said Jules. “But Charlotte made me change a layout even though the client already approved it.”

She slammed her giant key ring on the table and then slid herself, her giant woven purse, and her brown-bagged lunch into the seat across from me. “So now I’m totally caught between the client and her and I really don’t know what to do. I think I’ll just send the file
as is and tell her the client was not happy. Or maybe I’ll change it and let her take the… take the… why aren’t you listening to me? What’s wrong? Please don’t tell me it’s the termite mailer.”

“No, the mailer’s fine. It’s termite-tastic. Really.”

“Well, what, then? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Well, I kind of did.”

“What? Who?” she said, first sinking back with relief, then sitting back up and waving her hands. “Wait! Don’t tell me until I get everything out.”

She threw her cell phone and keys into her bag, unstuck her long reddish hair from her striped sweater coat, and pulled out three plastic containers of food. I peeked over the table, anxious to see what bizarre, low-calorie cuisine she would be dining on today.

To a (mostly) skinny, flat-chested gal like me, Jules was curvy and voluptuous and lovely. But to the rest of the world—and in her own mind—she was about twenty-five pounds overweight. Every few months she would try the latest fad diet, cooking up a week’s worth of recipes in her tiny studio apartment kitchen, but usually giving up by day three. I’d seen her try the no-carbohydrate diet, the caveman diet, the blood type diet, and even eat only red and yellow foods. I didn’t dare tell her what I really wanted to: that none of these “guaranteed” diets would ever work and to me, she was perfect and beautiful just the way she was. Whenever I made any comment about her looks, she always glared at me and said the same thing: “Easy for you to say. You have a husband and kids. My time is running out.” To which I would always respond, “Nonsense. You have plenty of time.”

Though because she was just shy of her thirty-sixth birthday, we both knew Jules was probably more right than I. Time was a cruel and discriminating bitch, and she preferred to leave slightly pudgy,
often wifty, dog-loving hippie chicks behind. No matter how sweet, beautiful, and talented their best friends thought they were.

So as she pulled out her current surefire weight-loss solution, I didn’t say anything, just watched her open small plastic containers and pour all the items onto a paper plate snatched from Bagel Towne’s counter. At least this week’s choice—the Pacific Rim diet, which promised that if you ate with chopsticks you would eat slower and feel full faster—had lasted all the way until Friday. I acted like eating homemade pad thai with chopsticks at a bagel place was perfectly normal and continued with my news.

“Do you remember when I worked at that little agency after college, and I met that guy in the elevator? The one doing the internship?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Come on. You remember. The really cute one? The one I almost castrated with my key card?”

“That sounds familiar. Didn’t he ask you out or something?”

“
Yes!
And like a dope, I said no,” I said, then turned the magazine toward her and stabbed his face for emphasis. “Well, there he is.”

“Wow, he sure knows how to wear a tux,” she said as she pulled the magazine closer.

“Well, he should. He’s a van Holt.”

“And apparently an ardent supporter of botanical gardens,” she said, reading the caption. “How admirable.” She rolled her eyes as she handed it back to me.

“I never even gave him a chance,” I said, my voice serious and quiet. “My bosses were horrified—they couldn’t believe I turned down a van Holt. Or understand why someone who was twenty-three wouldn’t say yes, boyfriend or not.”

“Oh, well,” said Jules. “He’s probably a weirdo anyway. A cokehead or serial killer or something.”

“No, he seemed sweet. Not like a rich jerk or anything. Not that I knew who he was then.”

I pulled the magazine and stared even closer, then looked up. “Why was I so stupid?” I continued. “The boyfriend I had at the time—the one I was so devoted to—broke up with me, like, three minutes later. Couldn’t he have realized he didn’t want to be tied down, like,
before
Alexander van Holt asked me out?” I felt my heart drop, as if that phone call was just yesterday, not years ago.

“Stop,” said Jules. “Why are you getting so upset? It doesn’t matter.”

“I know it’s silly, but I can’t help but think about what my life would have been like if I had just said
yes
,” I said.

“Oh my God, Bee,” said Jules, using my college nickname and a softer tone. “It wasn’t a mistake. You have a great life.”

“I know, I know. I love my kids. They are more than wonderful,” I replied as tears welled. “But life’s just so much harder than I thought it would be. There’s no money and no prospect of money, and Jimmy’s gone all the time, and the kids are always fighting and work is overwhelming and I’m just so tired. So, so tired.”

Inexplicably, I began to cry, tears dripping down my face and splashing onto the orange Formica tabletop. I pushed over the bagel and magazines and laid my forehead down among the sesame seeds. I started sobbing uncontrollably, right in the middle of Bagel Towne’s lunch rush. Jules, always the supportive friend and never one to be embarrassed, reached out and stroked my hair, shushing me quietly while using her other hand to stab my bagel with her chopstick. After a few minutes, I began to calm down, letting the cool of the plastic tabletop and the hum of the restaurant lull me to silence.

When I had quieted down, Jules spoke. “Well, Abigail Owen Lahey, I, for one, am glad you never went out with that rich guy. I can’t imagine you all Botoxed and blown out and lunching with the ladies.”

“Me neither,” I said, head still resting on the table. “But I bet Mrs. Alexander Collier van Holt never has to worry about the mortgage. And by the way, don’t think I can’t hear you eating my bagel.”

“Shut up, you dirty whore,” she deadpanned.

Leave it to Jules to make me laugh through tears.

Jimmy was picking up Sam on his way home from work, and Gloria’s carpool didn’t drop her off until later, so I knew I had a few minutes to change into sweats and slippers, start dinner, and maybe even use the bathroom without an audience. I was able to sneak out of work a half hour early, thanks to Charlotte needing a polish change before tonight’s Young Friends meet-and-greet at the Rodin Museum. As soon as she was safely out the door, computers were powered down and bags packed so fast you’d have thought there was a bomb threat.

I turned up our street of seventies-era brick boxes and stone bungalows and arrived at the Lahey residence. It was typical of the area, its front door facing the neighbors’ in the Pennsylvania Dutch style, its white wood siding accented by a blue-gray stone chimney. Nothing spectacular, but solid and well built. It was one of the few houses on our street without an ugly addition tacked to its rear. In other neighborhoods, our family of four was average; in Catholic Grange Hill, we were just getting started.

Ours was a commuter town, a lower-middle-class Bermuda Triangle wedged between West Philadelphia, the prestigious Main Line, and the rolling horse farms of Chester County. It was the kind of place where parents still yelled at their kids in public; lawn ornaments and birdbaths were considered chic without any sense of irony; and stores were named after what they sold: Fruits & Veggies, Beer/Soda, and Lamps! (the exclamation point the Grange Hill version of branding). The town seemed to suffer from decades of both
overuse and neglect, the entire zip code in need of a good power washing.

Turning into the driveway on autopilot, I slammed on my brakes, narrowly avoiding the side of a shiny red sports car parked sloppily across the asphalt. Its vanity license plate—“GRRRR”—did nothing to help identify the owner.

“Who the hell…?” I said, shutting off the ignition and grabbing my stuff. Running up the back porch steps, I noticed every light in the house was on and the door was not only unlocked but slightly ajar, swinging inward easily as I rushed inside. I also noticed that the dog, usually pawing at the door, was already out in the yard.

Panicking, I threw my bags down on the kitchen table and ran from room to room, though not sure what I was looking for. Thieves? Meth-heads on the hunt for drugs? A neighbor, already drunk from happy hour, mistaking our house for his and passing out on our couch? (That had actually happened once before; we gave him a cup of coffee and drove him home.)

And then upstairs I heard voices and the sound of water running.

“Jimmy?” I whispered as I crept up the steps, feet moving quietly on the worn runner.

And then another sound, a high-pitched giggle. But this I recognized.

As I opened the bathroom door, steam flowed out, revealing my daughter, Gloria, sitting on the toilet with a white towel wrapped tightly on her tiny frame and a second towel wrapped atop her head, framing her rosy-pink face. And standing just in front of her, someone even more sinister than a burglar, a desperate addict, or a drunken neighbor—my mother.

Roberta Eleanor Owen DiSiano was not your typical grandmother, or your typical mother. Hell, she wasn’t your typical woman.
At sixty-two years old, she had short, fluffy blond hair, layers of makeup, and long, dangly earrings that touched her shoulders. In the summer, she lived in tennis skirts and halter dresses, but on a cool fall day like today, she sported tight jeans, a fuzzy sweater, fur-trimmed boots, and plenty of turquoise and silver jewelry. Next to my tiny daughter wrapped in giant white towels, she looked like a slutty Eskimo hovering over the world’s smallest igloo.

I had to admit Roberta looked good for her age—fit and firm and painted and plucked—but for decades now she had embarrassed me with her choice of attire. Day or night, her clothes were always a little too tight, a little too short. She said she dressed to match her “tiger spirit,” but I had no idea what that meant and wasn’t about to ask. All I knew was that she was desperate for attention: from men, from women, from bank tellers, from bartenders, from Gloria, from me, from anyone with a pulse.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, catching my breath. “And what is Gloria doing with you?”

“Relax, Abigail,” she said, her eyes not straying from the nail polish, the exact flame-red shade as her lips, she was carefully applying to my five-year-old’s toes. “I got off work early, so I thought I’d pick up Gloria from school and show her my new car.”

“Mom, you can’t do that. They have rules,” I said, exasperated. “I have to let them know in advance if we change the pickup person.”

“It’s just elementary school; it’s not the Pentagon.”

Gloria chimed in, emboldened by her new nails and an hour spent with the tiger spirit—“Yeah, Mom, it’s not the Pentagong.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath, trying to remain calm. “I really don’t want Gloria wearing nail polish, and you know this. She knows this. Mom, I wish you would respect—”

“Well, us girls just have to look great on a Friday night, don’t we?”
she asked, steamrolling over me, then turning back to her granddaughter. “And when we’re done we can go downstairs and eat ice cream and talk about boys!”

“Eeeewwww,” shrieked Gloria, jumping off the toilet and racing out before I could say no to the ice cream, the nails, the fun.

I reached in and turned off the shower, then started picking up Gloria’s discarded clothes.

“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? My life is
not
an episode of
Sex and the City
, and my five-year-old daughter is
not
one of your girlfriends,” I said. “I am not Miranda, Gloria is not Charlotte, even if
you
are Samantha.”

“Of course not, Abigail,” she replied, her eyes locking with mine for the first time since I entered the room. “Even Miranda wouldn’t be caught dead in that outfit.”

After the kids were asleep, the dishes washed, and the laundry folded, I carried a cup of herbal tea up to bed. I padded carefully into the room, trying not to wake Sam, sleeping profoundly, as only a toddler could, just a few feet away. We kept his crib in our closet since the nursery radiator stubbornly refused to get hot. (When we had first bought the house, our plan was to renovate the back bedroom and add a bathroom, but with money being tight, what should have been a blue-and-brown monkey-themed nursery was now just a catchall for out-of-season clothes, old speakers, hockey sticks, and tax files.)

I climbed into bed, holding my steaming cup carefully as I sank back into my stack of pillows. I had just cracked the Edith Wharton novel I was reading—only a few pages from the end—when Jimmy appeared carrying a white envelope.