Lady in Waiting: A Novel (2 page)

She wanted me to say yes, so I did.

“I think so too,” she said. “I think we should swap these out for that vase of gerbera daisies you have on that escritoire in the shop’s front window. I don’t know what I was thinking when I brought these.” She reached for the unlucky pussy willows. “We can put these on the entry table with our business cards.”

She turned to me. “You did bring yours this time, didn’t you? It’s silly
for you to go to all this work and then not get any customers out of it.” My mother made her way to the entryway with the pussy willows in her hands and intention in her step. I followed her.

This was only the second house I’d helped her stage, and I didn’t bring business cards the first time, because she hadn’t invited me to until we were about to leave. She’d promptly told me then to never go anywhere without business cards. Not even to the ladies’ room. She’d said it and then waited, like she expected me to take out my BlackBerry and make a note of it.

“I have them right here.” I reached into the front pocket of my capris and pulled out a handful of glossy business cards emblazoned with
Amsterdam Avenue Antiques
and its logo—three A’s entwined like a Celtic eternity knot. I handed them to her, and she placed them in a silver dish next to her own.
Sophia Keller Interior Design and Home Staging
. The pussy willows actually looked wonderful against the tall, jute-colored wall.

“There. That looks better!” she exclaimed, as if reading my thoughts. She turned to survey the main floor of the town house. The owners had relocated to the Hamptons and were selling off their Manhattan properties to fund a cushy retirement. Half the décor—the books, the vases, the prints—were on loan from Aunt Thea’s shop. My mother, who’d been staging real estate for two years, brought me in a few months earlier, after she discovered a stately home filled with charming and authentic antiques sold faster than the same home filled with reproductions.

“You and Brad should get out of that teensy apartment on the West Side and buy this place. The owners are practically giving it away.”

Her tone suggested she didn’t expect me to respond. I easily let the comment evaporate into the sunbeams caressing us. It was a comment for which I had no response.

My mother’s gaze swept across the two large rooms she’d furnished, and she frowned when her eyes reached the mantel and the silent clock.

“Well, I’ll just have to come back later today,” she spoke into the silence. “It’s being shown first thing in the morning.” She swung back around. “Come on. I’ll take you back.”

We stepped out into the April sunshine and to her Lexus parked across the street along a line of town houses just like the one we’d left. As we began to drive away, the stillness in the car thickened, and I fished my cell phone out of my purse to see if I’d missed any calls while we were finishing the house. On the drive over, I had a purposeful conversation with Emma about a box of old books she found at a jumble sale in Cardiff. That lengthy conversation filled the entire commute from the store on the seven hundred block of Amsterdam to the town house on East Ninth, and I found myself wishing I could somehow repeat that providential circumstance. My mother would ask about Brad if the silence continued. There was no missed call, and I started to probe my brain for something to talk about. I suddenly remembered I hadn’t told my mother I’d found a new assistant. I opened my mouth to tell her about Stacy, but I was too late.

“So what do you hear from Brad?” she asked cheerfully.

“He’s doing fine.” The answer flew out of my mouth as if I’d rehearsed it. She looked away from the traffic ahead, blinked at me, and then turned her attention back to the road. A taxi pulled in front of her, and she laid on the horn, pronouncing a curse on all taxi drivers.

“Idiot.” She turned to me. “How much longer do you think he will stay in New Hampshire?” Her brow was creased. “You aren’t going to try to keep two households going forever, are you?”

I exhaled heavily. “It’s a really good job, Mom. And he likes the change of pace and the new responsibilities. It’s only been two months.”

“Yes, but the inconvenience has to be wearing on you both. It must be quite a hassle maintaining two residences, not to mention the expense, and then all that time away from each other.” She paused, but only for a
moment. “I just don’t see why he couldn’t have found something similar right here in New York. I mean, don’t all big hospitals have the same jobs in radiology? That’s what your father told me. And he should know.”

“Just because there are similar jobs doesn’t mean there are similar vacancies, Mom.”

She tapped the steering wheel. “Yes, but your father said—”

“I know Dad thinks he might’ve been able to help Brad find something on Long Island, but Brad wanted this job. And no offense, Mom, but the head of environmental services doesn’t hire radiologists.”

She bristled. I shouldn’t have said it. She would repeat that comment to my dad, not to hurt him but to vent her frustration at not having been able to convince me she was right and I was wrong. But it would hurt him anyway.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I added. “Don’t tell him I said that, okay? I just really don’t want to rehash this again.”

But she wasn’t done. “Your father has been at that hospital for twenty-seven years. He knows
a lot of people.”
She emphasized the last four words with a pointed stare in my direction.

“I know he does. That’s really not what I meant. It’s just Brad has always wanted this kind of job. He’s working with cancer patients. This really matters to him.”

“But the job’s in New Hampshire!”

“Well, Connor is in New Hampshire!” It sounded irrelevant, even to me, to mention the current location of our college-age son. Connor had nothing to do with any of this. And he was an hour away from where Brad was anyway.

“And you are here,” my mother said evenly. “If Brad wanted out of the city, there are plenty of quieter hospitals right around here. And plenty of sick people for that matter.”

There was an undercurrent in her tone, subtle and yet obvious, that
assured me we really weren’t talking about sick people and hospitals and the miles between Manhattan and Manchester. It was as if she’d guessed what I’d tried to keep from my parents the last eight weeks.

My husband didn’t want out of the city.

He just wanted out.

S
ometimes, during those first few weeks after Brad moved out, I’d wake in the middle of the night and forget I was now alone in my bed. I’d instinctively move toward Brad’s side, and when I’d feel the emptiness there, a strange kind of vertigo would come over me, and I’d grab hold of the sheets to keep from falling.

It happened every night the first week. I’d lie awake afterward until the alarm went off hours later, unable to stop contemplating why Brad wanted distance from me. And why it took me by such stinging surprise. By the third week, I wasn’t waking up in the middle of the night with vertigo anymore; I was just waking up. Sometimes at two in the morning. Sometimes at three. And I’d still be awake when dawn broke.

I hadn’t known Brad was suffocating in our marriage. That’s the part that made me shudder as sleep skittered away from me night after night. Brad had felt like he was suffocating, and I hadn’t seen it. Sometimes doubt kept me awake. Sometimes grief. Sometimes anger. And sometimes a messy mix of all three.

We were sitting at our kitchen table the morning Brad told me he was leaving. The Sunday paper was strewn among our coffee mugs, and the aroma of the western omelet I had made for us still lingered. Onions, peppers, and diced ham. It was mid-February, but the sun was bold that morning, and its flashy tendrils spilled across our shoulders from our balcony
windows as if it wanted in. Brad said my name. I looked up, thinking he perhaps wanted me to pass the french press to freshen his cup.

But he was looking off toward our front door, not at me.

“There’s a position in radiology at a hospital in New Hampshire,” he said.

Several seconds passed before I realized this was a circumstance that mattered to him. “New Hampshire?”

He looked at his coffee cup and stroked the ear-shaped handle. “Manchester. It’s in diagnostics, working alongside oncologists. Part of the job involves research and clinical studies. I was asked to consider it.”

He raised his head, and his eyes slowly met mine.

“You were?” Scattered thoughts ran through my head. I hardly knew which question I really wanted to ask.
Why are you telling me this?
seemed like a good place to start, but he spoke before I could decide.

“Actually, I was specifically approached. They’ve read my articles in the
Journal
, and they want me to come on staff.”

Perhaps I should’ve said something affirming, something that would let him know that I was proud he’d been handpicked for something, but all I could think was that Brad might actually take this job and we’d be leaving New York. Just like that. I was already wondering how I’d tell my mother and Aunt Thea I wouldn’t be able to manage the antique store anymore. Thea, tucked away in her assisted-living apartment in Jersey City, would probably insist my mother take over the store, since she wouldn’t trust it to anyone but family. My mother wouldn’t be happy about that. Antiques were not her thing. And the very idea of moving, of leaving everything that was familiar, was unsettling.

“But it’s in New Hampshire,” I said.

He resumed stroking the arc of the mug handle. “It’s a great career move.” His gaze was on his mug.

My thoughts zoomed to my parents. They’d probably see this as a stellar promotion, even if it did mean leaving Manhattan. My dad would anyway. My parents adored Brad. They always had. Perhaps they wouldn’t flip if I told them we were moving. But my mother would definitely be annoyed about my leaving the store …

“So, are you going to look into it?” I finally asked.

My question was met with what seemed like a long stretch of silence. When Brad finally looked up at me, I knew.

He’d already accepted the job.

My elbow knocked my mug. A tiny wave of coffee winked out and dotted the sports section. “You already said yes? Without even checking it out?”

“I interviewed last Thursday. They flew me up for the day.”

My face instantly warmed with a weird jumble of embarrassment and surprise. Brad had been to New Hampshire and back, on a day I assumed he’d been in Manhattan working a twelve-hour shift.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I murmured.

He pushed his mug away. “I really wanted to check this out on my own.”

The air in the room seemed to still. “Why?”

Brad rubbed his hand across his morning stubble. “Because … because I knew I would not be asking you to make any changes for me.”

My mouth dropped open. “What do you mean?”

But I knew. He meant he wanted to go to New Hampshire alone.

He sighed the tired exhale of someone who has to explain something that shouldn’t have to be explained. “I think it’s time we were both honest with each other.” He said it like he’d already imagined saying it a hundred times. “I think we need a little break.”

My first thought was that he was joking. But no one jokes about something like this. The worst of it was he thought I was in the know. He
thought I also felt the need for distance, that our marriage had hit a dead zone, and that we needed some time away from each other, and that I’d been pretending I didn’t see it. He must’ve been feeling this way for quite a while. And I had no idea.

The tears formed immediately. Two slipped out and slid down my face. Brad looked away.

“A break from what?” I whispered. “You want a break? From me?”

“Jane—,” he began, and it suddenly occurred to me, with nauseating force, that he was having an affair.

“Is there someone else?” I blurted. “Are you seeing someone? Are you having an affair?”

“No.”

He said it quickly. But in that same tired voice.

“You’re not having an affair?” I wanted to believe him but was afraid to.

“I’m not having an affair.”

For a split second, I wished he was. I wished he was having an affair, that someone had stolen his attention away from me. Then there would be someone else to be angry at. Someone to blame for yanking him away.

More tears slid down my face. Brad reached for a tissue on the breakfast bar behind us and held it out to me. I ignored it and wiped the tears away with the sleeve of my bathrobe.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said.

He tossed the tissue onto the table. “Can you honestly tell me you think everything is fine with us? Don’t you know it’s not? I shouldn’t have to spell it out. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Well, how did you think I would feel when you told me this?” Resentment rose within me, fueled by hurt and bewilderment. “How did you think I’d feel when you told me you wanted to leave me?”

“I didn’t say I was leaving you. I said we needed a break.”

“But you’re leaving me!” I put my hands in my lap to try to still them.