Leaving Haven (7 page)

“Georgia?”

Georgia realized she hadn't heard anything Alice had said for the last several minutes. “Yes, sorry. I got distracted by my fondant.”

“I think Wren's in love,” Alice said. “Has Liza said anything?”

“Wren? Really? You think she has a crush? Or an actual boyfriend?”

Georgia didn't mean to let her surprise show in her voice. Wren, two months older than Liza, had always seemed like the younger of the two. Wren was the one who played with her American Girl dolls long after Liza's dolls had been relegated to a forgotten corner of the basement, dresses dusty and ponytails askew. Wren's bed still held a menagerie of stuffed animals, gray koalas and golden puppies and orange tabby kittens, even a large plush green frog. Liza, in contrast, had redone her room this summer with Emilie's help, ripping off the wallpaper border of daisies, painting the lavender walls in bold shades of chartreuse, hot pink, turquoise, and black, of all things. The corner of Liza's room that had housed her doll collection now contained a stack of plastic drawers filled with curling irons, blow dryers, hair straighteners, and more lotions, mascaras, lip glosses, and eye shadows than Georgia had owned in her life.

“I don't know,” Alice said. “Wren is on the computer
all
the time, which is not like her. And she
glows
. I've asked her a few times why she's so happy and she just says, ‘No reason,' and smiles.”

“Hmmm,” Georgia said, picking up her fifth—or sixth?—cookie. “Do you know what she's doing on the computer? Is she on Facebook?”

“She doesn't have a Facebook account yet,” Alice said. “She doesn't turn thirteen until January.”

Georgia decided not to mention that Liza had had a Facebook account for three or four months now, even though she wasn't thirteen yet, either. Alice was a by-the-rules kind of person, something Georgia respected even though she herself was much less black-and-white about things.

“So what's she doing on the computer?” Georgia said.

“E-mail, I think. And she's paying more attention to what she wears, and her hair—oh, Lord, her hair. She's constantly fiddling with it and putting it up in a ponytail and taking it down and brushing it and putting it up in a bun and taking it down—it makes me crazy.”

“Maybe she does have a crush,” Georgia said. “Do you have any idea who it is?”

“No. I was hoping maybe Liza knew and had said something to you.”

“Liza barely says anything to me these days,” Georgia said.

Alice sighed. “Well, so much for my sleuthing. How are things with John?”

“Fine,” Georgia said, “I think. I talked to Polly about it, too.”

“Good. I didn't think you had any reason to worry.”

“You know what Polly mentioned?” Georgia put down her paintbrush, careful to rest it over a spoon so the food coloring didn't stain the counter.

“What?”

“Trying a donor egg to get pregnant.”

“A donor egg?” Georgia could hear the surprise in Alice's voice. “So you're
not
done with the idea of another baby?”

Georgia looked at the refrigerator, where a picture of a fat-cheeked Liza, age six months, smiled back at her. Liza had been the most perfect baby, with enormous dark eyes; tiny, perfect ears that lay close to her head; and a ready, happy smile. Just looking at the photo made Georgia want to nurse. “No,” Georgia said. “I'm not done.”

“Did Polly offer to donate an egg?” Alice said.

“She can't,” Georgia said. “She's over thirty-five and has that thyroid thing.”

“Chessy could. She looks more like you,” said Alice, ever rational. “What does John think?”

“I haven't mentioned it to him yet.”

Alice was silent. “Georgia, are you sure about this? You've been feeling”—Alice paused, to search for the most diplomatic word, Georgia thought—“
unsettled
in your marriage. You know I'll support you in whatever you want to do, but I want you to be sure, to be happy.”

“I know.” Georgia picked up the paintbrush again and twirled it between her fingers. “I think maybe John's been a little depressed about giving up on a baby. You know he always wanted Liza to have a sibling. But he never wanted me to feel like I'd let him down. So he doesn't really talk about it. But I was thinking maybe this flirtation,
if
it's even that, with Amelia is his way of making himself feel better. I noticed that thing with the chicken kebab right after I told him I wanted to stop trying for another baby.”

“Men,” Alice said. “I don't know why they can't just say what they feel.” She paused. “So when are you going to talk to him about Chessy?”

“Tonight, I hope.” Georgia didn't mention that she hadn't quite cleared it with Chessy yet. One thing at a time.

“Good luck,” Alice said. “Call me tomorrow and tell me how it goes.”

“I will. Thanks. And if I glean any info about Wren's lover, I'll let you know.”

“Whoever he is, he better not be her lover,” Alice said. But she laughed.

“All right, sweetie,” Georgia said. “We'll talk tomorrow.”

She clicked the phone shut and stared at the clock. Five o'clock, time for a glass of wine. She'd need it for tonight, when she planned to talk to her husband and persuade him to give her one last chance to hold a baby of her own in her arms again.

S
HE
AND
C
HESSY
had talked about it once, although she doubted Chessy would remember. They'd been downtown, at the coffee shop with the brick walls and green velvet couches that Chessy loved. Chessy was so busy that the only place Georgia could ever catch up with her was at a coffee shop or the Laundromat. (“The Laundromat? Really? Can't you just bring your laundry to my house and do it here?” Georgia would beg. “How am I supposed to haul my laundry to the suburbs without a car?” Chessy would say. “Were
you
ever twenty-something?”)

Sometimes the thirteen-year age gap between them seemed more like twenty years, or thirty. Georgia knew that in families like theirs—families without a mother and with a big age gap between oldest and youngest—she, as the eldest, was supposed to be a surrogate mother to her sisters, and she had tried to be. But Chessy had confounded Georgia from the moment she was born. She was a loud, fussy baby and a wriggly, irascible toddler, and instead of wanting to mother her Georgia fantasized about giving her away to some tolerant childless couple who would adopt her and move someplace far away, like the Arctic Circle.

Georgia, ever responsible, had done her best to take care of Chessy anyway in those years. She played endless imaginary games with her, games in which Chessy was the mischievous Tom Kitten and Georgia was the big rat who captured her and rolled her up in dough to make a kitten pie. For a few months Chessy demanded this game so often that Georgia started to have dreams about giant rats in chef's hats, and her shoulders ached from rolling Chessy up in Polly's big sleeping bag and unrolling her, again and again.

Georgia wasn't sure Chessy would understand
why
she wanted another baby so much. She didn't know how to explain that having Liza had made her feel normal again in a way she hadn't since their mother had died, that Liza's birth had filled at least part of that empty space. But she couldn't say that to Chessy, because Chessy had never known their mother, who had died the day after giving birth to her.

True, Georgia had had a hard month or two after Liza's birth, when the fact that her own mother wasn't there and hadn't been there for
fifteen years
cut into Georgia like a whip, opening up something fresh and raw. She had withdrawn into her grief for a while, leaving the newborn Liza to John and Polly and her father, until eventually she came out of it, drawn by her fierce love for Liza and the growing realization that even without her own mother around, she knew what to do.

Georgia knew it was difficult for Chessy—young, single, childless—to understand the yearning she felt. But that day in the coffee shop, with the disappointment of that morning's negative pregnancy test weighing like a stone inside her chest, she couldn't
not
talk about it.

“I guess Liza will be my only child,” Georgia had said.

“You can try again, Georgie,” Chessy said. Georgia remembered Chessy had been busy opening sugar packets and pouring them into her coffee.

“Isn't that enough sugar?” Georgia said. “I think you're up to four packets now.”

And Chessy shot her that look—that you're-not-the-boss-of-me look she had so often flashed at Georgia as a toddler.

“Sorry,” Georgia said. “Anyway, I don't think I
can
try again. I'm getting old, my eggs are getting old . . .”

“So use someone else's eggs.” Chessy didn't even look up from stirring her coffee. “You can have Polly's eggs—hers are obviously good, right? Or mine.”

It was an offhand remark, something Chessy tossed aside as casually as she tossed the empty sugar packets onto the table.

“Really?” Georgia leaned forward. “This is serious for me, Chess.”

Chessy had looked up, her dark hair brushing back against her collarbone. “Well, God, of course. I don't care about my eggs—at least, not yet. And I have millions of them, right? You can have one, or ten, or however many you need.”

Georgia had been warmed by Chessy's ready generosity, her guilelessness. But now Chessy was twenty-seven. And even though she was still single and not really seeing anyone and busier than ever with her Pickup Chicks (she had a pickup truck and a group of sturdy friends who moved things for people) and her acting gigs, maybe she
would
have second thoughts about donating her eggs. It was a big deal. Chessy would have to endure ten days of shots and ultrasounds and then the egg retrieval, which—Georgia knew after going through it three times herself—was somewhat uncomfortable and kind of freaky, with that giant needle sliding up into your ovaries.

The other issue, of course, was John. John and Chessy had never really taken to each other. Chessy was eleven when Georgia and John got married, an awkward almost-adolescent who had disliked John from the day she met him.

Georgia had been besotted—she and John were both living in Albany, working at Truscello's, where she made the desserts and John worked under Jimmy Amadori, the head chef. Late at night John would come home to her tiny apartment after they got off work and make pasta from scratch, carefully kneading the dough with his big hands, rolling it out delicately to just the right thickness before slicing it into slim ribbons he draped over the wooden clothes-drying rack in the living room. He'd chop up rich, ripe plum tomatoes and simmer them with garlic and onions and toss in fresh oregano and a splash of red wine. They would eat at 3:00
A
.
M
. over the coffee table in the living room, Georgia sitting cross-legged on the floor, and John on the couch opposite her. The food was always a prelude, part of a seduction that was a foregone conclusion. John made love to her with food, and wine, drizzling it into her mouth from his, dripping it carefully into her navel, dipping his finger into the wine to trace a pale ruby-colored path down, bending his head to follow the same path with his tongue . . .

But of course Chessy couldn't be expected to understand Georgia's incredible physical attraction to John. To Chessy, John was nothing more than an interloper—the extra place mat at the Thanksgiving dinner table; the guy who rode shotgun in the car when Georgia was home, relegating Chessy to the backseat; the distraction whose ready laugh and intent gaze stole the attentions of Georgia, of Polly, of their father.

Chessy's stint as a hostess at Bing's hadn't helped much, either. John, at Georgia's urging, had hired Chessy to be hostess one summer when she was home from college. Chessy had found the computerized reservation system impossible and had taken to scribbling down reservations on napkins and the backs of receipts and business cards, leading to total confusion every evening as people arrived for their tables. Even worse, one evening when a picky diner had complained about his tagliatelle al ragù di piccione, saying there was too much sherry vinegar in the ragù, Chessy, in her best theatrical voice, had informed the customer that he wouldn't know sherry vinegar from piss. John had fired her on the spot, and been fairly annoyed with her ever since.

“She's nineteen,” Georgia had said, in Chessy's defense.

“Right,” John had said. “Old enough to know better. This is
Bing's,
not some motorcycle bar.”

“She was probably thinking of that expression, you know, ‘full of piss and vinegar,' and it just came out.”

“I don't care. It shouldn't have come out in my restaurant,” John had said.

So now she had to figure out a way to convince John to try in vitro once more, with a donor egg from her “screwball sister,” as John referred to Chessy. Then she had to convince Chessy to donate an egg, or ten or twenty.
Ay yi yi.

I
T
WAS
ALMOST
midnight by the time Georgia finished brushing a delicate whorl of gold leaf down the center of the last of the eighteen fondant peacock feathers. She placed the feather down on the wax paper lining the big tray and breathed a sigh of relief. She covered the tray with a film of plastic wrap and slipped it into the fridge in the basement, then walked up the stairs, thinking about John.

John had been a little quiet lately, which was odd because he was not the type to brood. Most of the time John was fully engaged in whatever he was doing, whether it was sautéing scallops or searching the Internet for a first edition of
Ma Gastronomie
or hitting a tennis ball—
thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack
—against the back wall of the garage. He was in a good mood ninety percent of the time, and when he wasn't in a good mood he got over it faster than anyone Georgia had ever known.