The Barter (21 page)

“How can you be worried about someone's dog at a time like this? Our children must be
starving
!” Martha smiles wickedly. “I don't know how we forgot to give them dinner. We must be the
world's worst parents
.”

Sandra opens her mouth but then shuts it.

“It's because it's a Friday,” Martha explains to Sandra. “I'm so blown out after work every day, I can hardly think straight. And at the end of the week I'm just a
zombie
. And then when I get home I
just want them
off
me, you know? Like I
should
be so happy to see my kids but I just need a fucking
second
to myself!” Martha is shaking her head widely. She concludes, “You know what that's like, you're an attorney, too.”

“No, I'm not,” Sandra says in a small, satisfied voice.

“Oh. Sorry. Graham said you were pre-law. I guess you just . . . what, dropped out?” There's a large blink here.

“I finished college,” Sandra says. “I'm not a dropout.”

“Of course you're not,” Martha says soothingly. “I just meant . . . you dropped out of, you know, the world. The
working
world,” she amends.

“You are unbelievable,” Sandra says, eyes wide. She takes a step backward.

“Wow, that took even less time than I thought it would!” Martha crows. Graham, who has been doing an excellent impersonation of someone with a train to catch, excuses himself and moves away into the violet green. Bridget watches him go, envious.

“I have the best, most important job in the world,” Sandra says crisply. “I am a mother.”

“Oh-em-
gee,
we work for the same people!” Martha exclaims, and cracks herself up. Bridget tugs on her hand.

“Let's go find Gennie,” Bridget murmurs. She tugs again. Martha's fingers are warm and plump. Martha makes some elaborate verbal gestures about the end of the conversation, but Sandra is already striding across the grass. Graham has disappeared.

“I can't believe she let me have the last word!” Martha cries.

“It's too easy, Martha. It's like that game the guys play. Just let her go,” Bridget says distractedly. She is still looking for Mark and Julie. Did he leave? Did Julie have some kind of meltdown? Are they
on their way home to the ghost right now?
And what would happen, anyway, if it was just them, just the two of them, alone in the house with her?
The thought produces a sensation that's equal parts terror, curiosity, and vindictiveness.
I'd love to see just five seconds of how he'd deal with it if he could see her. I really would.

“You're right. You're smarter than me and the rest of these gals put together. Which is why it
kills
me that this is your world now. That woman”—Martha points directly at Sandra's well-toned back in its retreating tank top, shouting—“is a fraud and a fool!”

“Okay, okay.”

“Don't dismiss me, missy. Knowing what we know about longevity rates, divorce rates, unemployment rates, the state of health care, the expensiveness of getting old, the disappearing social safety net, the fact that we're all going to be supporting our parents
and
our kids in twenty years, the likelihood that at age ninety we'll all still be alive, increasingly sick, with homes that have run out of equity and children who can't afford to care for us, and only the money we earned and invested twenty and thirty years ago to support us—if a woman doesn't
actually
shit gold bricks
directly
into her IRA, she's got
no business leaving the workforce just because she has children
. Study after study shows that women don't reenter the workforce at the same pay scale where they left it, study after study shows that—”

“I know. You hate them. I know.” Again, Bridget can't help but appreciate Martha's baldness, her forceful heart, although her own thoughts, her heart, are elsewhere, far away—sometimes it feels as if she's far beneath the earth, looking up at everyone she used to look in the face. “I know, I know, I know.”

And now Bridget finally sees Mark, on the perimeter of the gathering, near the hydrangeas that mark the border of the green central
square. He is talking to a beautiful woman holding a child: Gennie. And Gennie is actually holding not Miles but Julie. The three of them are serious, not laughing, but still, it's like seeing him kissing someone else.

What could they possibly be talking about?

Her. Of course. They're talking about her. Gennie is concerned. Mark is bemused. Julie looks worried, as if she's trying to follow the conversation but can't quite. As Bridget watches, she sees her daughter's mouth shape the word “Mama,” and she sees Julie strain away from Gennie's arms, not toward Mark but rather as if she wants to be set free to waddle in the grass. Which does look delicious and cool and green and fine right now, as Bridget stares down at it in an attempt to regain her composure, blinking back the strange series of emotions that seem to have overtaken her.
This isn't panic, this isn't jealousy, this isn't humiliation, this isn't love. This, this, what is this?
She wonders where Miles and Charlie are. She scarcely knows Charlie, Gennie's husband. She knows that he works like a dog and makes piles of money and takes Gennie and Miles on three insanely great vacations every year with an au pair for Miles: Paris, Anguilla, Greece.

She thinks of Gennie's question.
Is he cheating on you, Bridge?

How would you know, Gen?

She looks back up, across the park, to where her husband and her friend stand with her daughter.

“Oh, she must be the pretty one,” Martha chooses that moment to say, following Bridget's gaze. “Hey, are you all right, hon?”

But Bridget is now striding across the grass toward them, her eyes trained on Julie like a searchlight.

*   *   *

P
erhaps she is crazy after all.

Her father, even before he disappeared into the desert, had been a little bit
not all there
. On the rare occasions when Bridget still wonders whether the ghost is actually real, she speculates about whether her father's strangeness has finally begun to manifest in her.
Here it is at last, the bad case of the crazies you were born to inherit sooner or later, and here is what it causes to happen: arguments, accidents, insomnia, neglect, divorce. Sound familiar?

There's something about having a ghost in the house that truly is familiar to Bridget. In some ways it reminds her of nothing so much as her father. Like the ghost, her father left traces of himself around the house even when he was nowhere to be seen: the trailing scent of a joint, a cabal of empty bottles, a run of bad checks. Like the ghost, her father had a way of standing still and appearing to retreat into himself; he'd open the refrigerator and stand looking into it forever, or he'd swing open a window and lean perilously far out, seeming to search the parking lot below their apartment for a visitor. He took up jobs and left them, took Bridget and Carrie-Ann to the playground and wandered off. It hadn't taken Kathleen long to understand that whatever charisma she'd loved in him was bound up in his vagueness and his dangerousness, but that making him leave—really leave, and for good—would in the end be harder than enduring either. It was all the more ironic that the accident that had killed Carrie-Ann was in no way her father's fault—if it
had
been his doing, it was the kind of thing that might have seemed inevitable to a cruel observer. The accident was not his fault, but it meant the decisive conclusion of her father's attempt to live like a normal person, with a family and a wife and a job and a roof. All of that ended, to the extent that it had even begun. Her father slipped away into what really
seemed like a hovering, insubstantial world, one that, like a harmless planet, drifted occasionally into a neighboring orbit, throwing Kathleen and Bridget's tides into brief disarray before moving off again on its inelegant route.

Given what her father had been like, Bridget supposes it's little wonder that she's preprogrammed to believe the worst about her own husband whenever he gives her the opportunity. But then again, Mark could give her fewer opportunities, right? He could be a lot less shady and remote. Mark is
not all there,
either. Mark has some ghostlike qualities of his own, oh, certainly—for instance, where is he, half the time? Who is this disembodied voice she keeps having these frustrating conversations with? Like the ghost, he comes in and out of view without any perceivable pattern, leaving mostly an impression of bitterness and things left undone. Even the product of his work, the work that keeps him from appearing fully real to her anymore, is insubstantial—it's technology, but it might as well be magic for how real it seems to be in the world. What does he do all day long? Where is he?

Bridget marches up to them, the three of them, and Julie lights up. Mark notices and follows Julie's smile to Bridget's face, which she knows is not exactly set in a welcoming, loving expression. Mark moves a step closer to Gennie in order to help her with Julie, who is now squirming like a seahorse, entwined against another body with no knowledge of how she got there. Bridget knows it is her imagination, but he also seems to move toward Gennie as if to protect her. There's something in Bridget's face, perhaps, that he's not familiar with.

Mark is too handsome, too funny, too nice. Like Gennie, he can be indiscriminate in his gifts, without exactly realizing it. Without exactly realizing that after what
she's
given up, given away, everything that's
him
—the loose-limbed stance, the warm skin and straight,
intelligent gaze, the extravagantly furred forearms with the texture she loves—all of that needs to belong to her, and only to her.

Gennie meets her eyes, but barely—it's exactly as if Bridget is the wife she's heard Mark talk about. Martha is trailing her. Bridget ignores them all and simply plucks Julie out of Gennie's arms. Partly because Bridget is still holding her drink and partly because she doesn't so much as acknowledge Gennie, the transition comes off a little wobbly. Julie's leg swings out and just misses clocking Gennie in the face.

Mark says to Bridget, “Be careful.”

You be careful.

“I'm Martha,” “I'm Gennie,” and the two of them shake hands. Bridget isn't sure what she'd been expecting—maybe a thunderbolt—but Martha seems content to behave herself now, having had her fun with Sandra.

“Gennie and I were just wondering where you two got off to.” Mark steps into the middle of the rough circle they've formed in the grass, bringing himself closer to all of them but particularly, as it happens, close to Gennie, who does not shrink away. In one of his large hands he is holding Julie's sandals, the sweet, chubby little sandals that he brought home from work one day in April, having ordered them online based on a coworker's recommendation, and they
are
great sandals, sturdy and pretty and waterproof, so he's not completely
not all there,
is he. “Jujubee is super tired, Bridge. Do you want to take her home?”

“Do
I
want to take her home?” Bridget echoes, flustered. “But Martha and Graham are still here!”

“Fine, I'll take her.”

“Wait, you actually meant for
me
to take her while you stayed?”

“God! No, I meant we could both go,” Mark says defensively, which is how she knows she was right. He works all week, she does not; ergo, he deserves to have fun more than she does.

Gennie puts her hand on Mark's arm, and Bridget has to restrain herself, physically restrain herself, from giving the smaller woman a shove. “It's okay, I can take Julie home and sit with her for a while—you guys stay out and have fun. Miles and Charlie are home tonight because Miles has a cold. So I was going to go home early anyway. I feel like a bad mama being out when he's sick.”

“What a lovely person,” Martha remarks, without, it seems to Bridget, much of a motivation to do so.

“Where's Julie's stroller?” Gennie persists. “I can take her home and put her to bed. You guys stay out. Your friend's here, Bridget. You guys have a good time. I wish I could stay, too.”

For an inflated moment Bridget feels herself staring at Gennie in disbelief—it really feels as if she has time to read all the way through her, her pretty, funny friend, the only other mother she hangs out with regularly who has a sense of humor, and who seems to do everything right without taking anything too seriously, who always knows what to say and how to give comfort. Despite all the kindnesses Gennie has showed her, despite the essential goodness and uniqueness of this person she's staring at, Bridget suddenly
hates
her—she can't help herself. How else can a person, a flawed normal person, possibly hope to feel with Gennie around?

It's Mark who finally says, “Gennie, thanks so much for the offer. But we couldn't make you do that. We're going to hang out for a little while longer and then we'll take Julie home.”

“Well, I'm digging in,” Martha announces grandly, with a yawn. “I'm digging into this damn party for the long haul. I'm going to be
here until midnight. Midnight still exists, right? I haven't seen it in a while, but I hear it's still out there.”

Gennie laughs. She's never heard anything so funny. Good old Gennie. Even Martha can't help but be gratified.

Mark says ruefully, “Yes, Martha, midnight is definitely still happening. Every night.”

“You would know.” Gennie nods, all exquisite sympathy.

“You know, when I had my kids, I just stopped
being available
for the late-night bullshit. I just
delegated,
” Martha says to Mark, eyebrow cocked high. “And it was hard, but you know what? The sun continues to rise and set, the shit still gets done, and I get to have dinner with my kids.” She pauses for effect. “Every damn day. The little filthy hellbeasts. So lucky, lucky me.” Gennie is laughing helplessly. “All I'm saying is, I want a job at PlusSign so I can eat dinner at my desk again like a civilized human being. Better yet, why don't you give
Bridget and Julie
both jobs at PlusSign and you can all have dinner and whatever the hell else there together. It's one of those offices with, like, a fro-yo machine, right? Babies love yogurt.” Gennie is wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, the only one of them besides Martha who finds this remotely funny.