Time of My Life (24 page)

I peel off my coat, hang it on the front doorknob, and exhale.
Relax! Just freaking relax!

“Wow, eggnog!” I say, moving into his living room to survey the place. “You really went all out.”

“Full confession,” he says, hands up like a newly disarmed bank robber. “I ran down to the deli downstairs and picked up whatever they had.” He laughs. “We will be decidedly
ungourmet
tonight.” He pauses to survey me now that I’ve peeled off the protective elements. “You look
great.
”

“Well, I’ll take an eggnog,” I answer, deflecting the compliment.
You are not supposed to like me dressed like a rodent! That is not your thing!
“Deli style or not.”

I watch him for a moment in his tiny galley kitchen, barefoot in his faded jeans and rumpled navy cable sweater, then turn back toward the expanse of the apartment. It is spare, more so than I remember it, with a black leather couch and an oversized TV screen that is on but muted, and a beige rug with a tiny ribbon pattern that’s only noticeable if you’re sitting on the floor. Honey-colored built-in bookshelves line the back wall, and they’re gorged with stacks and piles of hardcovers, most of which, I already know, are autobiographies of famous explorers or historians or politicians or examinations of science and medicine and the world at large. A wooden desk peers out over his living room window, and other than a computer, it is virtually bare: no picture frames, no cluttered mail.

Is this how I became so linear?
I think.
Is this why I flitted around the house to ensure that nothing was out of place, so nothing ever shifted for him?
I twist my engagement ring around my finger, and remember how, when we moved to the suburbs, I was determined to pull together a magazine-worthy home, how desperately I needed to leave behind my scars from my mother and the mess of my old closet and my desk and, really, of my former life.
No,
I say to myself now.
Henry isn’t why you became what you became. It‘s not so simple as that. Though maybe his need for order is what drew you to him in the first place.

Henry nudges me from behind. “Your drink, ma’am.”

I turn, taking the eggnog, foamy in a glass beer mug, from him, and smile.

“A toast,” he says, raising his bottle of Amstel.

“To what?” I ask, though I raise my glass just the same.

“To . . .” He hesitates and thinks. “To life. To time. To 2001. To the way that we got here and the places we’re going.”

A rush of tears floods my eyes, but I blink them back before he can take notice. “I’ll drink to that,” I say, then sip my actually pretty-good eggnog, though not as good as the homemade version that I’d eventually make for our various neighborhood Christmas events.

“So what happened with your mom?” Henry asks, depositing himself on the couch.

“Well, what’s more interesting is what happened with my dad, actually,” I reply and join him. “Turns out, he forgave her a long time ago.” I shrug. “I guess he feels like he holds some responsibility in all of it.”

“He probably did,” Henry says simply. “Where there’s an effect, there’s usually a cause.”

“So says your professor of a father,” I say with a grin.

“So says he.” He smiles back. “But, I mean, for the most part, it’s true. That’s always what I’ve found most difficult about relationships, how . . .”—he swigs from his beer and searches for the phrasing—“how tough it can be to change in conformance to the other person. It just seems like one person is always changing too much and the other not enough. And then the cause and effect just makes it worse. You feel like you’ve given too much, but then keep giving because the other person doesn’t . . .” He drifts off. “It’s just never easy. Not for me, at least.”

“Not for me, either,” I say, wondering why Henry and I have never spoken frankly like this before, or, if we did, back in the whirlwind days of our dating life, why I’d forgotten such conversations when life pushed us in other directions.

“But you’re marrying Jack,” he offers. “It must be different with him.”

“It is,” I offer, though the words are neither forceful nor direct. I consider how much I’ve bent on the wedding planning, on his aimless ambition, on molding myself into a perfectly crafted version of who I thought he needed me to be. It wasn’t altogether different, I realized just as I had in Vivian’s bathroom when the image of my future self startled me into tears, from what I’d done in my marriage to Henry. And, the thought pummels me, if the problem didn’t lie with them, then it lies with me, rendering this whole trip, this whole
fucking experience
inconsequential because my history wasn’t what I needed to change. I was.

“Oh, I almost forgot! Dessert!” Henry says, puncturing our pregnant silence and bounding off the couch, flushing away the morbid realization that was creeping into my consciousness.

I hear wrappers crinkling and a minute later, he returns with a platter of powdered doughnuts, Twinkies, fluorescent pink Snowballs, a Twix bar, and a mound of Skittles.

“Nice,” I giggle. “Very upscale.”

“Only the finest is served here at Casa Henry,” he says, grabbing a butter knife and delicately slicing off the end of the Twix, then popping it in his mouth.

He rests the plate on the coffee table, sits next to me, and reaches for the remote. I tear into a Snowball, unnaturally colored as it might be, and press the sacchariney coconut into the roof of my mouth until it dissolves, sending trickles of artificial flavoring and sugar down the back of my throat. Henry turns up the volume on Times Square.

“I know it’s strange, but man, I love this.” He gestures toward the TV, reaching for a Twinkie. “The whole thing. The crazy tourists, the confetti, Dick Clark.” He sighs and takes a bite. “I think I’ve seen it every year since I was a kid.”

I watch him watching the revelry. His straight nose and his creamy skin and his pillow lips, so much like our daughter’s, the little girl who isn’t even yet a blip, a seed in his mind.
How could she be, after all?
I think.
He can’t know what the future brings.
But then I consider that now, lost in the maze between what has happened in the past and what has already transpired in the future, neither can I know what the future brings. I glance at him, inconspicuously now, trying not to appear too obvious, and ache—literally physically ache—for my daughter’s straight nose and her creamy skin and her pillow lips, and I stop myself from reaching over and sliding my fingers down the bridge of his nose and onto his lips, as if that might somehow connect me to Katie. As if that might bring her back or ignite a series of events that would still allow her to be, to thrive, to live.

Henry notices me staring, despite my efforts, and cocks his head.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine.” I wave my hand and swoop down for some Skittles, but my dampened eyes betray me.

“No,” he says firmly. “You’re not.”

I look at him for a beat too long. I can remember it clearly now, that Henry and I weren’t always broken, that there was a time when we were our true selves for each other, when our nuances weren’t lost, when we weren’t putting forth so much effort to be what we thought the other wanted that we taxed ourselves empty. It wasn’t that we didn’t have what we needed to begin with, it was that we, the both of us, let it seep away.

But tonight, I can’t explain any of this to Henry. I know that he wants to hear it, to listen to why I’m so weighed down, but the explanation is just so outlandish, so
ridiculous,
that even I, with my new understanding of my future husband, can’t bear to unload it.

Knowing that he wants to know is enough.

So instead of answering, I excuse myself to the bathroom, and when I return, it is nearly midnight.

The glittery silver ball is descending and the crowd is furiously chanting down the numbers and the biting winter air, clear now of snow but still frigid and uninviting, swirls the confetti through the air. Henry looks over at me and smiles, giddy with boyhood excitement, and I, too, am caught up in the moment, my eyes wide and my grin bigger.

With five seconds to go, he looks over at me, and because I know him so well, I already know what he’s thinking. He brushes aside his bangs, and I see him consider it, consider moving closer, but then we are at
three,
and then at
two,
and then finally
one,
and in that literal second, there is a bubble between us, each staring at the other, each willing the other to move. But then I see the moment pass inside of him, wash right over his eyes, so he leans over, kisses me on the cheek, and whispers, “Happy New Year, Jilly,” just like he would whisper for the next six years to come.

Later, he insists on walking me home. We trudge through the piles of snow and beyond revelers who, in spite of the storm, seem to crowd the streets in drunken packs, and my face nearly freezes from the chill. But after he’s deposited me safely, and I rush inside toward the warmth of my lobby, I realize that while my cheeks have gone numb, there, that spot where he kissed, seems to burn hot enough to warm me from the inside out.

W
HEN
I
WAKE
the next morning, there is a message from Jack. He’ll be home in two days, and Happy New Year, where are you?

I wrap myself under my covers until it seems too gluttonous to stay in bed any longer. I peer out my window, and the sun has risen, strong and bright, and already, the snow is dissolving into streaky drops on the glass, into flooding puddles on the street.

I walk to my closet and pull open my sock drawer and tug out Izzy’s New Year’s card. I rattle around in the kitchen drawer until I find some tape, and then I paste it up on the refrigerator, a daily reminder of a nine-year-old who hadn’t yet found a way to conceal her true colors.

I sink onto the kitchen floor and gaze up at her card, with its lopsided snowflakes and piles of glitter.
That is how life should be,
I think.
Shiny and imperfect but, despite the flaws, still full of promise for the year to come. How did I miss that in the first place?

Chapter Twenty-six

B
ut why can’t you just go along with it?” Jack is saying, as he steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his tanned, lean waist. “I mean, she wants to throw us a party, and she’s already started making the calls and doing the planning, so come on, Jill . . .” He trails off and moves closer, kissing me on the neck, as if that will convince me.

“I just . . . don’t,” I say, pushing him away. His face clouds into a bruise. “Besides, the wedding is in three months; do we really need an engagement party
now
?”

I’d read enough bridal magazines to know that, in fact, engagement parties were thrown for an
engagement,
not because the mother of the groom was once again looking to insert herself into a relationship and had grown bored at the lull in the planning.

“How’s the writing going?” I ask, hoping to divert his attention, hoping to hear that perhaps Jack’s New Year’s resolution was to finally,
finally
find something, anything, writing or otherwise, that ignites his fire. Life with Jack has started to feel like we’re playing on a loop: circling everything, going nowhere, and it’s hard not to acknowledge that his lack of direction, his total complacency with his lot, is part of the problem.

But he ignores me.

“It will be small, tasteful,” he insists, wandering into the living room to retrieve his dry cleaning from the front hall closet.

“It’s not an issue of size,” I say, following him in. I spy the time on the cable box. “
Shit.
I have to run.”

“So we’ll talk about this later?” he says.

“Why? You heard me,” I answer, stabbing my arms through the sleeves of my coat and throwing open the door. I knew it was a small thing, even a petty thing, to refuse this engagement party, but it seemed like a good place to start—to start saying no, to start crafting a better version of myself, rather than an echo of the old one.

“Come on, Jill,” he weaves his arms around my waist and kisses me fully on the mouth. “Just think about it.”

“Really, Jack, there’s nothing to think about,” I say flatly. “I just have too much on my plate, with your mom’s nonstop wedding plans and craziness at work, and this is just the last thing I want!”

“Think about it,” he repeats, as I’m running down the corridor toward the elevator. I don’t reply and instead fling myself into the open door of the car going down.

Josie has left me a message that she needs to see me in her office at 9:00
A.M.
, and though I’m uncertain as to why, I suspect that the Coke team has been less than pleased with one aspect or another of our ideas for the spring campaign. You would think that this would be easier—creating ads that I’d already seen before—but I’ve spent countless hours, too many hours, I suppose, attempting to remember the commercials and print layouts and copy from six years ago, and . . . I just can’t. They are details, like so many other life details, that at one point occupied a temporary space in my brain and now have jumped ship and drowned themselves. So I’m working solely with my own imagination, skills, and creativity, and I fear today, as I hustle into the lobby of my office building, that this simply isn’t adequate anymore. That I’ve cashed in all my talent chips and that maybe the pot I assumed lay within me, a pot that I grieved through my years of full-time mommyhood, wasn’t such a bounty to begin with.

Josie’s staring out her window, her back toward me, when I rap on her door.

She swivels her chair around and wanly smiles. She is still tanned, but now, underneath her browned skin, she looks ashen and drawn.

“Oh God, I screwed something up, didn’t I?” I say before she can speak. “Coke hates the new ideas. Jo,
I’m sorry.
I feel like I’m spinning my wheels with these ideas and not getting
anywhere.
” I toss my bag on the floor and sink into the chair opposite her desk.

“I haven’t heard anything from them,” she says with surprise. “I’ve actually thought what you’ve been coming up with is good. Quite good. You don’t?”

“Oh, well, er . . . I think maybe I’ve just lost perspective. You know, we’ve been working so much that it’s like a vacuum, and I can’t get a grip on the quality that I’m producing.” And this was true. Maybe my shortcomings were simply imagined, and I was a broken barometer whose gauge fluttered about freely.

She nods, then chews on her words. “Well, I’m pleased, and as far as I know, they’re pleased.”

“So . . . what’s up?” I furrow my forehead.

“I have some news.”

“Oh my God, you’re not pregnant, are you?” I clap my hand over my mouth.

“No, no, definitely not pregnant.” She manages an ironic laugh, and I can tell that she’s thinking,
I’d have to have had sex to be pregnant.
And I know she’s thinking this because I’d think it so often in the last days of my marriage to Henry.

“I’m, well, I’ve let the other partners know that I’m leaving.” She casts her eyes downward and picks a stray cuticle.

“Leaving what?” I say with genuine confusion.

“This. Here. I’m leaving the firm.”

“For where? Why?”
This isn’t what happens in your life story! You stick around to create award-winning, world-recognized campaigns!

“Well,” she says after she clears her throat, “I’m moving to San Jose. Art wins.” She shrugs. “We’re going.”

“But Jo, you love this job!” I sit up straighter in my chair.

“Sometimes,” she says simply. “Sometimes not really.”

I look at her for a moment: I’d never really considered it, that Josie wasn’t here because she loved it. Of course I knew that the job took her away from her children and her home life and other parts of herself that she might want to nurture, but never for a moment did I realize that what she was getting in return wasn’t adequate bounty for her, that she might have fallen into this path and been unable to correct her course until now. That life swept her up and before she realized it, her children were half-grown and her husband barely knew her, and while she could craft a hell of an ad campaign, that didn’t feel worthy of much.

“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” I answer finally. “But I’m happy for you, Jo, if this is what you want.”

“Who knows what I want.” She shrugs, then sips her coffee. Her red lipstick leaves a ring around the lip of the mug. “But, more important, I called you in here because I spoke with the partners, and we all agree that while you won’t be named an official partner, we’d like to see you take over most of my responsibilities.”

I don’t answer, though I feel words spinning around my brain, lodged there, unable to come out. This is all happening much too quickly, the changes, the shifts;
none of this is supposed to happen. I don’t want to be a partner at DMP! I don’t want to log in longer hours over tedious copy and bargain with clients who don’t know what they want in the first place!
I physically twitch in my chair. Because, best I can remember, work is what I loved most from my former life, and now, that, too, is just a figment of memory, no more or less real than anything else about whom I thought I used to be.

“I’ll think about it,” I say to her, exactly what Jack had hoped to hear an hour back.

“You’d be great,” she says, smiling genuinely for the first time in our conversation.

Probably,
I think.
But it’s like Henry once said: risk or gain. What did I stand to lose more of, now that I was getting everything—the ring, the man, the job—that I ever wanted?

M
EG IS MEETING
me after work at Tiffany. Vivian has alerted me that her friends are simply not satisfied with my pitiful registry, and thus, has implored me to ask for more.

“Dear, they’re going to buy you something anyway. So please let them know what you’d like! It makes everyone feel better about the process,” she said in a voice message on my work line earlier in the day.
Which is funny,
I think,
because that’s exactly how it worked out the last time, when Henry and I married.
I didn’t miss the formal place settings or the sterling candlesticks until we moved to Westchester, when I swirled myself into a desperate housewife whose china patterns were as important as her manicures.

Jack has begged off the task tonight, citing an issue deadline, and truly, I don’t blame him so much. When we first registered, he gallivanted around Crate and Barrel, clutching the scanner like an armed robber, but after thirty minutes, he listlessly flopped in an oversized love seat, and I more or less did the same. Somehow acquiring these physical representations of our union seemed less appealing than either of us expected. Five minutes later, we left and instead went out for a drink.

Though just six o’clock, the sky is blackened with clouds, and the avenues are illuminated solely by the streetlights. The sidewalks have refrozen, thanks to arctic air that’s pushed in from the north, and I’m slowly shuffling toward the store, moving along cautiously, my arms slightly askew for balance.

Meg is on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Fifth, bundled with a furry hat and a full-length down coat that disguises what I assume is a blossoming bump underneath.

She waves when she spots me halfway down the block. Just as I’m about to reciprocate, I hear the sharp screech of car brakes, then the clamor of taxi horns and the sick crunching of metal, and finally, the shrill shriek of people all around me. Everything slows down in a way that I might have wished it to in my old life, and frames of frantic masses and a battered streetlamp flash before me. My legs are lead, my boots weighting me down like anchors, and as I push forward, I feel as if I’m swimming through the ticking seconds of time. I look for Meg, but she’s no longer there, and instead, a taxi is crushed into a mailbox on the corner, and a crowd has huddled around it.

Someone yells, “I’ve called 911,” and suddenly, my cells grant me freedom, and I rush forward, pushing my way through the huddle, forgetting about the slippery, treacherous pavement underneath.

Meg and two others are flat on the ground, each of them bleeding, none of them conscious. I emit a strangled, frantic cry, then kneel down to comfort her, but someone pulls me back.

“Don’t touch her,” the stranger says. “You could make the injury worse.”

The minutes spin, and finally, soon, too long—I have no idea—I hear the blare of sirens screaming down the avenue. Paramedics jump out and the circle of the crowd grows wider to accommodate them. The EMTs busy themselves with work, taking pulses and gently shifting limbs and, in the case of an elderly man who lies perpendicular to Meg, compressing his chest, then breathing into his mouth until he chokes out gasping air.

“She’s pregnant,” I cry to the pair of paramedics who are lifting Meg onto a stretcher. “She’s pregnant!”

I see alarm rise over their faces. “You know her?” one asks.

Yes, I nod, unable to say more, as an earthquake of sobs makes its way through me.

“Come with us then.” A strong arm tugs on my elbow, and I’m whisked into a blaring, too loud ambulance. Meg, her eyes still closed and with a line of blood snaking down her forehead, follows on the stretcher. One of the EMTs places an oxygen mask over her mouth, and the other slams the door closed with a heavy thud that shakes the entire vehicle.

The siren continues to swirl, cutting through the icy night air, and the tires spin beneath us. We rush down the avenue and over the streets and hurry forward toward the hospital, hoping, furiously, that time will creep ahead slowly enough for us to catch up and undo the damage that we are certain will come.

I
AM BARGAINING
with God in the waiting room. Tyler is pacing the halls outside of the ER, and Jack has gone to hunt down semi-digestible coffee, and I am left alone with my guilt and blame.

Please God, let Meg keep the baby. I will marry Jack and never complain about anything ever again. Thank you very much. Love, Jill.

Dear God, I know that I’ve been asking for a lot lately, and that you’ve been very flexible in terms of accommodating me. But if you just do me this favor—keep that baby in there—I’m open to pretty much anything you need. Jill.