Falling (5 page)

P
atience has never been a virtue of Emma's. She wants the house to look gorgeous, cozy, and welcoming, but immediately. She doesn't want to sit around waiting for primer to dry before she commits to more sanding, more coats of paint, and still more sanding after that. The prep never seems to end.

Finally, the shelves are done, and dry. There was so much paint left over that she carried on painting the orangey brown wood paneling on the walls. She is nervous about Dominic's reaction but can always strip it if he hates it. Would he hate it? How could he hate it? Look how much better it looks already! Look how this room has been transformed with just a coat of paint!

Her glass desk is perfect at the end, a small love seat in a slub linen pushed to one side, piled with printed pillows and a cashmere throw. White ceramic Chinese stools offer occasional seating, sitting atop the new sisal carpet that stretches to each corner. It is officially the
coziest, prettiest office ever, with an orchid sitting on the desk next to a bleached wooden lamp that cost next to nothing.

The rest of the cottage is still dark and dismal, but this room? This room! Emma pulled off the white slatted blinds, most of which were broken, and stapled a large piece of sheer canvas over the window. It is completely private and allows a soft light to filter through. And simple linen panels hang on either side, hiding the staples and framing the window.

It is gorgeous, she thinks, every time she walks in. She sits on the sofa, looking around the room and admiring the transformation she has wrought in such a short space of time.

Even the vertical planking no longer bothers her. Now it is a glossy pale gray, and four large black-and-white prints of delicate flowers cover most of the wall.

She picks up her phone to check the time. Almost five. Dominic said his barbecue was kicking off at five—time for the quickest of showers and some clean clothes in order to meet his friends.

Reluctantly, she uncurls herself from the sofa and heads out of the one perfect room in the house, gingerly walking over the brown carpet in the hallway to make her way to the bathroom.

•   •   •

Emma has never enjoyed walking into parties alone where she doesn't know anyone. She has never been particularly good at small talk, although she had managed to hold her own after years of working in the city and attending social events that would be good for business.

She had never liked those kinds of parties, or truthfully, any parties at all. She was much better on a one-on-one basis, or with small groups of people she knew well and felt comfortable with.

Much the same thing used to happen at each party she attended
in her years of living in New York. It was either in some fabulous apartment in New York—a loft in the East Village, a classic eight on the Upper East Side—or at someone's weekend house, whether a shingle spread in Southampton or a renovated farm in Millbrook. The women would all be beautifully dressed (white linen shifts in the Hamptons; jeans, heels, and gauzy tops in both the city and the country), and would all shriek with excitement upon seeing each other, gabbing furiously as the husbands converged around the drinks, usually served from a permanent wet bar tucked into a small nook somewhere in the apartment or house.

The men would drink single malts and straight vodkas, while the women invariably chose some cute, pretty signature cocktail for the night. As the evening progressed the women would keep to their side of the space, and the men would keep to the other.

Occasionally the twain would meet, particularly if a sit-down dinner was involved, but even then, the men would shout to each other across the table, leaving Emma bewildered at their lack of manners. There'd been more dinners than she could count where she sat next to a man she hadn't met, and peppered him with questions about himself, only so she didn't have to sit in an uncomfortable silence. She was never obtrusive, but polite and gracious, only to have him break off in midconversation to shout something to a friend sitting across the table.

Either that, or Emma would eventually run out of questions, and then, instead of asking her anything about herself or initiating any other subject of any kind, her dinner partner would just carry on eating in silence, leaving Emma chewing her chicken, or short ribs, wondering how early she could leave without causing offense.

Emma's mother may have been a nightmare, but she was a stickler for manners, for being gracious, and always—almost always—
immaculately behaved. What would she have done in these situations, Emma used to think, imagining her mother turning to her father and saying, with a sniff, “NQOCD.”
Not quite our class, dear.
It was quite as awful an expression as “not PLU,” which her mother used frequently—
not people like us
—but, of course, Emma's mother never realized that these expressions were only ever used tongue-in-cheek, never seriously.

Emma thought back to one party in particular, in East Hampton. She'd been dating a man named Evan, the only man she knew at a party filled with the usual mix of braying bankers and their trophy wives, who showed off their worth with crocodile clutches and heavy gold men's watches dragging down their tiny wrists.

The dinner was interminable. She sat next to an imperious know-it-all, and afterward, when they all retired to the vast sun porch, she almost sank with relief at the prospect of a quick escape.

After the meal, the men disappeared, apparently to the barn, which housed whatever it is men like to do late at night, leaving Emma in a room filled with women she didn't know, none of whom had spoken to her all night.

She excused herself politely, removed her heels, and slipped silently out the back door, walking back to the house they were staying in. She gratefully crawled into bed and was fast asleep by the time Evan joined her, hours later, so drunk that his snoring woke her and kept her awake for the rest of the night. She ended things as soon as they arrived back in New York.

As Emma approaches Dominic's cottage next door, she shakes her head to clear the memories. Parties are decidedly not her thing, but a barbecue in the garden at her landlord's house . . . at least there will be no pressure to perform. At least the crowd won't consist of self-absorbed bankers and intimidatingly gorgeous and perfect women.

At least there is that.

She pushes open the gate that separates the two gardens, hearing the buzz of happy chatter and children's squeals. A group of people are standing around a trestle table covered in a red-and-white checked tablecloth, with bottles of wine and soda, and a big aluminum bucket filled with ice and cans of beer wedged underneath.

The table is covered with platters of chips and dips, giant bowls of pretzels, and M&Ms mixed with popcorn. Children grab handfuls of the snacks when their parents aren't looking and run back and forth between them and a great big inflatable pool and slide at the bottom of the garden, not wanting to miss a second of the fun.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Jesse's at the top of the slide, yelling for his father. “We need more water! We need the hose!”

“Okay, buddy!” Emma sees Dominic put his beer down and grab the hose, pulling it back down to the slide. “Coming right up.” He turns and sees Emma, and grins broadly.

“You made it! I'm so pleased. Help yourself to a drink—I'll just finish this off, then I'll come and introduce you to everyone. Hey, AJ?” A tall man at the other end of the garden looks up. “This is Emma, who I was telling you about. My tenant.”

“Emma!” As AJ shouts her name, everyone turns to look at her, with smiles and waves. Emma walks over, shakes hands with people as she tries to remember everyone she's introduced to—AJ and Deb, Joey, Frank, Kevin, Tina, Johnny, Andrea and Victor—before someone hands her a cold beer and she takes a grateful swig.

“The English tenant,” AJ says, a great big bear of a man with a huge smile behind his thick beard. “How's your landlord treating you?”

“So far, so good. But ask me again in another week.”

“Dominic says you were a big-time banker. How do you like our slow life out in the suburbs? He says you're retired.”

Emma laughs. “That makes me feel like a pensioner. I'm not retired; I couldn't afford to retire. But—well, I've retired from banking, I suppose. So far I'm loving it. No stress, no pressure, no working all hours of the day and night. I'm in heaven, although I can't do this forever. I'm just taking a small break before I decide what to do next.”

“And how did you find Dominic?”

“Craigslist.”

“Really? Now that's a great story.”

“It is? There's no great story there. I just answered an ad for a rental house, and . . . voilà.”

AJ shrugs and winks knowingly. “It's not a great story
yet
.”

“What do you mean?” Emma feels a faint blush coming on, as he unself-consciously teases her. “There's no romance. Anyway, he's dating someone.”

AJ laughs good-naturedly. “Gina's not someone you
date
. She's someone you . . . do other stuff with. I'm sorry, I'm just teasing you. You're single, Dominic says, and you seem like a great girl. What's wrong with wanting my friend to be happy?”

Emma laughs. “That's very sweet, but it's a terrible idea. What if it all went horribly wrong and I had to move out? What if we ended up hating each other and then had to continue living next door with me having to ask him to fix the faucet every time it broke? Terrible idea. The worst.”

“What if you ended up falling madly in love and discovered you were each other's soul mates?” AJ says, as a woman walks over and leans tenderly against his shoulder. Emma realized she must be Deb, who was introduced to her along with AJ. Now Deb shakes her head with an exasperated smile at Emma.

“Is he teasing you? I'm sorry. It's what my husband does. It's like some bizarre initiation rite he has to go through with all the women Dominic's interested in.”

“Oh. That's okay. Dominic's not interested in me. It's not what you think. I'm just the tenant.”

“He's not? Are you sure?” Deb asked.

“Very sure.” Emma laughs, excusing herself to go into the kitchen. How bizarre of his friends to be so preoccupied with the idea of her dating him. She felt she had to get away from the scrutiny. Perhaps she can help with the food.

“Can you baste the ribs?” says a woman, struggling to pull a lasagna out of the oven. “I'm Andrea. Andrea Leung. We met earlier?”

“Of course,” says Emma. “Are you from around here?”

“We live in Massachusetts, actually, but we're here visiting friends. Penelope?” She turns suddenly, calling out to a sweet little girl sitting at the kitchen table. “Run outside and check on Grace and Victoria.” She turns back to Emma. “Sorry. Just needed to check they're not getting into trouble.”

“Of course. How do you know Dominic?” Emma asks, to be polite more than anything else.

“I don't. My husband, Victor, went to school with AJ, and we're staying with them, so he brought us. He seems lovely, though. You're lucky.” She smiles, turning on her heel to take the food outside before Emma can close her mouth, which had dropped open in surprise at the comment, or have a chance to correct her. But she had to wonder what was going on. Why did everyone assume she had some kind of romantic connection with Dominic?

She turns back to the ribs, basting them with the sauce, ready to put them in the oven as Jesse runs into the kitchen, feet soaking wet
from the slide. With a yelp and a loud cry, he goes skidding into the kitchen table, banging his head, collapsing in a small heap on the ground.

“Jesse!” Emma races over and feels his head. “Are you okay?”

Jesse is furiously trying to blink back tears as he nods. “I'm okay,” he says in a small voice, trying very hard not to cry.

“Let me feel,” says Emma, hoping he doesn't cry, because she has absolutely no idea what to do with a crying child. She runs her hand over the side of Jesse's head, where she can already feel a bump forming. “Oh boy,” she says. “You've got a big one.”

“A big what?”

“A big, ginormous volcano erupting out of your head.”

“It hurts.” He blinks back more tears.

“Can I rub it for you? Sometimes that helps. And we can put some ice on it, too. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” he says, as Emma rubs his head just the way her mother used to rub hers. Leaving him for a second, she goes to the freezer and pulls out a bag of frozen corn that looks like it's been living in there for years. And just behind it, she spies a box of frozen Fudgsicles.

“Okay.” She goes back and scoots down onto the floor next to Jesse, the bag of corn in one hand, a Fudgsicle in the other. “The corn's for your head, the Fudgsicle's for your mouth. You know chocolate is the very best thing for bumps and bruises, right?”

“No,” says Jesse. But he reaches for the Fudgsicle as Emma holds the frozen corn to his head. Just then Dominic walks in, his face sinking when he sees his son's tear-stained face.

“Buddy! What happened?” he says, rushing over to pick Jesse up.

“I'm okay,” says Jesse, who is more interested in sucking the Fudgsicle than in discussing his wound. “I skidded on the kitchen floor.”

“Wet feet,” explains Emma.

“Emma looked after me. I feel better now,” he says, as Dominic winces when he feels the bump, before putting him down on the floor.

“No running with wet feet,” says Dominic sternly. “What did I tell you?”

“Sorry, Dad. Can I go back to the slide?”

“Only if you walk.”

“'Kay,” says Jesse, Fudgsicle in his mouth, as he turns and runs out of the kitchen.

“No running!” shout Dominic and Emma together. Then they look at each other and laugh.

“Sorry,” says Emma, who finds herself holding the bag of corn again. “I hope you weren't saving the corn for anything special. It's clearly vintage.” She turns the bag over to look for a sell-by date. “Goodness, sell by October fourteenth, 2010. This could be worth some serious money. Have you considered contacting
Antiques Roadshow
?”