The Replacement Wife (33 page)

Larry coughed into his fist, wearing an embarrassed look.

“Ah, but then we’d have been just two ships passing in the night,” Curtis said. “I wouldn’t have gotten to know you . . . or Junior here.” He placed a hand on Holly’s now sizable baby bump.

His comment might have seemed odd to anyone who wasn’t apprised of the situation, but it made Camille smile. Though seeing them together, seated alongside each other at the window table Curtis had charmed the hostess into giving them, it was hard to imagine a more unlikely pair: Holly in her shredded jeans and vintage smock-dress that doubled as a maternity blouse, a stack of silver bangles on each wrist . . . and Curtis in his custom-made suit and trendy tie. Camille knew it was possible for two people with so little in common to make a go of it—she’d seen it happen with clients—but it was unclear, despite their obvious affection for each other, whether either Holly or Curtis was so inclined. Holly was evasive whenever Camille tried to pin her down.

And yet there they were, parents-to-be.

“So, do you plan on staying in New York?” Camille asked him after their entrées came,
Niçoise
salad for her—her default choice these days because it was usually the least filling thing on the menu.

“For the time being, yeah.” If Curtis felt pressured by the not-so-subtle attempt to take his measure, it didn’t show—he seemed relaxed and untroubled. “Down the line, who knows? My bank has offices in cities all over the world. This time next year, I could be living in Tokyo or Dubai.”

“Curtis is their golden boy.” Holly spoke with pride. “When he asked to be transferred back to the States, they promoted him when anyone else probably would’ve been fired.”

Larry, dapper in a cream linen blazer and palm-frond-patterned shirt, lifted his head from the pork chop he was sawing at to issue an approving smile. “Still, it doesn’t take away from the gesture,” he remarked, turning to Curtis. “That was very noble of you, son. You did the right thing.”

“Actually,” Curtis confessed, “when Holly told me she was pregnant, I was looking to make a move; that was just what decided it for me.” He wore a vaguely sheepish look—that of someone who didn’t want to be portrayed in a bad light but who wasn’t going to take full credit where it wasn’t due. “I hated living in London. The cold and damp alone are enough to drive a sober man to drink.”

Camille wondered what to make of it. He was honest—she gave him points for that. But was that all Holly and the baby were to him, an excuse to change locales? She glanced over at her sister to see if she’d taken offense at Curtis’s candor, but Holly’s face was smooth and unperturbed.

“I spent a fair bit of time in London myself, when I was flying for Pan Am.” Larry stepped in to ease the awkward moment. He grew expansive as he went on, “As a matter of fact, it was on a flight from Heathrow to JFK that I met the Duchess of Windsor. We’re talking 1974 or 1975, roughly thereabouts—I remember, because it was all over the news about Watergate at the time.”

Camille and Holly had heard the story so many times they knew it by heart, but it was the first time for Curtis, who perked up, wearing a look of interest. This was Larry at his best, when he reminisced about his adventures as an airline pilot back in the days when air travel was glamorous—when passengers dressed up, and being a stewardess, as her mother had been at one time (she’d met Larry on what she later called, jokingly, her “maiden voyage”), was considered an exciting career—before it became the equivalent of being crammed into a flying sardine can. “We’d hit some turbulence coming in for the landing,” he went on, “and after we’d taxied to the gate this very elegant older woman, thin as a rail, wearing a black dress—it had a jeweled brooch pinned to it; I remember because it was so unusual, shaped like a panther—came up to me as first class was disembarking. She said, ‘Well done, Captain.’ I thought she looked familiar but didn’t know who she was. It was my copilot, Dick O’Brien, who clued me in. ‘There goes the woman who brought down the British throne,’ Dick said. ‘And to think we had to fight the Revolutionary War to do it.’” Larry chuckled at the memory, and the others at the table joined in.

Holly got their father to tell the story of where he’d grown up—in one of the mansions in Newport, of all places; not one of the grand, beautifully-refurbished ones that offered guided tours but the crumbly, old, small-by-Newport-standards kind belonging to formerly wealthy folk who could no longer afford the upkeep—while he was on a roll. Afterward, Camille asked, “What about you, Curtis? Where did you grow up?”
Somewhere in the Midwest
was all she had been able to glean from the bits and pieces of information Holly had seen fit to impart.

“A little town you’ve never heard of—Miami, Oklahoma,” he replied, breaking into a grin as he added, “I know—when you think Miami, you think palm trees and ocean views, but all we had was cows and cornfields.” Whereas someone else in his position might have put on airs, he seemed proud of his humble beginnings. He’d been raised on a cattle ranch where his dad was the foreman, he said, and had gone to Stanford on scholarship. He was recruited by HSBC right out of college and had been with the bank ever since. “The first time my folks came to visit me in New York, they didn’t know what to make of it. They were glad to see me, but just as glad to go at the end of their stay.”

What would they make of an illegitimate grandchild?
Camille wondered.

“I’m getting Curtis his very own Snugli,” joked Holly, when talk turned to the blessed event. “Can’t you just see it—Mr. Wall Street here, with his BlackBerry and a baby strapped to his chest?”

Curtis laughed, but his laughter seemed a bit forced.

“Won’t the logistics be tricky, with you living in the city and Holly in Brooklyn?” Camille asked him, ignoring the warning look Holly shot her. He hadn’t said anything about giving up his Tribeca loft or having Holly and the baby move in with him.

“We haven’t figured out all the details yet.” Holly jumped in before he could respond. “We’re, um, sort of playing it by ear.” As if everything would magically sort itself out once the baby came.

Dear God. They really have no idea.
But that was Holly for you. Her existence had been marked by lifestyle choices that ranged from the mildly reckless to the downright scary—like the time her ex-boyfriend Ronan was driving drunk, with her along for the ride, and they collided with a tree (luckily, no one was seriously hurt). Though Holly was lucky in one sense: She hadn’t suffered any lasting damage from the repercussions of those choices. But it was one thing to go out on a limb, another to do so with a baby. Camille could only hope she’d have some company out on that limb.

“I hate to break it to you, guys, but babies have their own agenda. Remember how I was with Kyra?” she reminded her sister. To Larry and Curtis, she said, “I’d read every child care book I could get my hands on, so I thought I knew what to expect, but those first few weeks after Kyra was born, I felt totally out of my depth. I could barely cope, much less get her on any kind of schedule.”

“Life seldom works out the way we plan,” Larry observed, his gaze turning inward as if he were reflecting on opportunities missed. Then he roused from his reverie, and switched to a safer topic. “Now, who wants dessert? Lunch is on me, so order up. I, for one, have my eye on the pear tart.”

“I’ll have the same,” Holly and Curtis said in unison, then laughed.

“Me, too,” chimed Camille, though she knew she wouldn’t be able to finish hers—she’d only managed to eat half her
Niçoise
salad. Whenever she and Edward ate out, he usually ended up eating most of her dessert. She pictured him and Elise sharing a piece of pie or cake in some candlelit restaurant and felt her stomach twist. It was worse somehow than the thought of them kissing.

After they’d eaten and Larry had paid the bill, Curtis said his good-byes before heading back to work. Camille hugged him, saying warmly, “I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of you.” Perhaps a strange thing to say to the father of her unborn niece or nephew, but the situation itself was strange.

“I hope so, too,” he said, his blue eyes crinkling.

Minutes later, the sisters were strolling along Bleecker Street, with its storefronts featuring everything from housewares to sex toys, on their way to a children’s clothing shop Holly wanted to check out. Their dad had left to go back to his hotel—he had some calls to make, he’d said—so it was just the two of them. Camille sensed her sister waiting for her to render an opinion on Curtis, but she had decided to keep it to herself until asked, if only to confirm her suspicion that Holly wasn’t as la-di-da about all this as she pretended to be.

It was one of those rare summer days that New Yorkers live for, hot but not unbearably so, perfect for dining in sidewalk cafés, sitting out on stoops . . . or strutting one’s stuff. They passed a homeless man in rags sporting a pair of glittery red sneakers, then a woman in hot pants and fishnet tights who teetered along on five-inch platform heels, never mind she looked old enough to collect Social Security. A bike messenger, in a bright pink helmet and Kelly green Spandex shorts, whizzed by on his ten-speed, nearly colliding with a teenage girl in tight jeans and a midi top. Camille felt a great affection for the city she’d lived in all her life and loved as she would an eccentric relative, one that was both delightful and abrasive. It wouldn’t miss her when she was gone—she was but a grain of sand in its sea of humanity—but she’d been indelibly shaped by it.

“So?” Holly asked, finally. She turned to Camille with an expectant look.

“He’s a good guy,” Camille said. “And quite the charmer. Not the type you usually go for, which, believe me, is a plus,” she added wryly. “I could see you two together. The question is, do
you
see yourself with him?”

“That’s not what I asked. I only asked if you liked him,” Holly replied irritably.

“Well, you
are
carrying the man’s child.”

“I got knocked up, okay. You don’t need to be in a long-term relationship for that. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have seen him again if it hadn’t been for the baby.”

“Yes, but with babies you can’t just wing it. You have to have some sort of plan.”

Holly shrugged indifferently. “You know what they say—we’re all raised by amateurs. None of us knows what we’re doing. You said so yourself. You didn’t have a clue when you had Kyra.”

“The difference is, I wasn’t in it alone—I had a husband.”

“Just because you have a husband,” Holly said, “it doesn’t mean
I
have to. We can’t all have the perfect marriage like you.”

Camille frowned, thinking,
Perfect marriage? Far from it
. Maybe it had been at one time, but that no longer held true.

They came to a stop in front of a tastefully appointed storefront, with a yellow-and-green striped awning and flowers in planters out front. Child-size mannequins in the front window displayed European-made children’s clothing that probably cost as much as a trip to Europe. They went inside and made their way to the infant wear section in back, where Holly held up a tiny, pink smock appliquéd with ducks. “What do you think? Should I ask if it comes in a more gender-neutral color?”

Camille bent to peer at the price tag. “Only if you plan on taking out a bank loan,” she said. Holly glanced at the price tag, too, and quickly returned the item to its rack. “You’ll definitely need a second income if you plan on buying anything in this store,” Camille told her.

Holly just shook her head.

Looking around at the tiny outfits and onesies, it seemed impossible to Camille that her children had ever been small enough to wear clothes that size. Just as impossible as her belief, back then, that nothing could ever come between her and her husband. How naïve she’d been! The marriage she’d once thought a fortress was really more like the mansion her father had grown up in: once grand and since fallen into repair. The question was, could they fix it before it crumbled down altogether? When it was her time to go, she wanted the good memories to outweigh the bad; it would be easier for Edward if he had no regrets.

Camille felt so sad then, she wanted to curl up amid the downy piles of terry and soft cotton knits and be a baby again herself, not a care in the world and with her whole life still ahead of her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“B
y the way, Ruth enjoyed her lunch with Camille,” Hugh remarked as he and Edward were toweling off in the locker room after their showers, following a vigorous game of racquetball at Hugh’s athletic club. Their wives had met for lunch the previous week.

“Camille enjoyed it, too.” Edward kept his voice light, but at the mention of his wife, he felt the muscles loosened by his workout start to tighten again.

Hugh, naked as a Sasquatch and just as hairy, reached for his boxers. “Ruth thought she looked well, considering. Other than being much too thin, of course. Though if anyone can remedy that, it’s my Ruthie. You know her, she never met a knish or a kugel that didn’t have someone’s name on it. Usually mine.” He chuckled and patted his ample belly.

“All donations gratefully received. We never say no to Ruth’s cooking.”

“You could use some fattening up, too, my friend,” Hugh observed, shooting him a pointed glance. Edward had lost weight in the past weeks, not enough to be noticeable, in terms of girth, but enough to accentuate the haggard look he wore. “Just remember, you won’t be much good to your wife if you don’t take care of yourself.”

Edward gave a dry laugh. “I’m not much good to her either way, it seems.”

Hugh paused to eye him gravely. “You’re doing what you can. The rest is in God’s hands.”

But not in the control of Camille’s oncology team, it appeared. It had been eight weeks since they’d started her on the new drug, and so far she’d shown no sign of improvement. She was no worse, but Edward took little comfort in that, knowing it was likely due to the chemo, which was aimed at slowing the progression of the disease. “No disrespect, but I don’t have much faith in God right now,” he said. “Or in the miracles of modern medicine.”