Leaving Haven (11 page)

When Georgia came back into the kitchen, after resisting the urge to slap her daughter, Chessy held her rose aloft. “Look!” Her voice was triumphant. “I finished one.”

It was the fattest rose Georgia had ever seen, stuffed with dozens of petals like a pom-pom for a high school float. But Chessy hadn't bothered to hang it upside down to dry, so as she waved it around the petals began to droop, first one, then another, then another.

“Oh, Jesus.” Chessy looked at her rose. “Oh, no.” She sat down on the black-and-white floor and began to cry.

John took one look at his sister-in-law, wiped his hands on a dishtowel, said, “I'll leave you two alone,” and disappeared.

Georgia dropped to her knees and put both arms around her sister. “
Sshhh,
” she whispered. “It's okay.” She pulled back and looked at Chessy, whose face was stained with tears and mascara. “Sweetie,” Georgia said. “What is it? It's not like you to get upset like this. I hope this isn't about the rose—it's just a rose.”

“It's not the stupid rose,” Chessy said. She sniffled several times.

“And I'm
not
mad you dropped the cake,” Georgia said. “Accidents happen.”

“
No,
” Chessy said. “It's not the cake, either.”

She raised her face to Georgia, the tears still clinging to her lashes. “I don't even know why I'm crying,” she said, “because it's not something terrible, I guess.” She paused and looked at Georgia with a mixture of surprise and wonder and sheer terror.

“Oh, Georgie,” she said. “I'm pregnant.”

7

Alice

Four Months Earlier, February 2012

T
he inexplicable thing about it—well, one of many inexplicable things about it—was the fact that she fell for a Bad Boy, a genre of men Alice generally disdained. She remembered once,
months
ago, talking to Georgia about Bad Boys over one of the infinite cups of coffee they'd shared in Alice's sleek teal-and-taupe kitchen. Georgia was admiring the new light fixture Duncan had installed, bemoaning the fact that John never installed light fixtures or fixed leaky faucets or power washed the deck the way Duncan did.

“But you knew John wasn't like that,” Alice said. “And you married him anyway.”

And Georgia had smiled in acknowledgment and said, “Right. I knew he was a Bad Boy.”

Alice never really thought much about John, other than to feel bad for Georgia that John wasn't more competent and involved on the home front. John was always there in the background at birthday parties and Thanksgiving dinners and summer vacations at the lake, but he was on the periphery of her friendship with Georgia—a side dish, not the main meal. And he was not at all the type of guy—or even the type of human—who appealed to Alice. John reveled in chaos, always running twenty minutes late for everything, always talking on the phone while he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other flipping incessantly through the radio stations to find a song he liked. One time he'd been late to pick Georgia up at the airport and was so busy texting while jogging through baggage claim that he hadn't even noticed the gigantic white pillar in front of him and had run straight into it and cut his head open. He paid little attention to politics (blatantly irresponsible, in Alice's mind), rarely exercised other than playing an occasional game of doubles tennis (equally irresponsible), and devoured paperback thrillers about detectives who loved to cook. He was fetishistic about ingredients—especially mushrooms and olive oils—and enjoyed arguing about the most inane things, like whether Honus Wagner or Ozzie Smith was the greatest fielding shortstop of all time. Why, once he'd gotten so heated up during a discussion about the rules of Hearts that he'd picked up the deck of cards and hurled it into the fireplace.

“He's not
really
a Bad Boy,” Georgia had said. “He's kind of devil-may-care and a little bit reckless and passionate”—Georgia blushed—“but he's also hardworking, and sweet. I don't know.”

Alice had felt a twinge of envy, but dismissed it as unworthy. She would be hard put to describe Duncan as passionate about anything, even sex. Duncan was
careful
in bed. He made love to her slowly, always considerate to make sure she came before he did, then he would slip on his boxers and lie next to her, one arm thrown across her belly. Once in a while he read articles in
Men's Health
about improving your lovemaking, but if something he tried was successful—like that thing with the feather—he repeated it over and over until it drove Alice mad. “We don't need to use the feather
every
time,” she had said, but he had smiled and said, “Oh, but I know what it does for you.” She had finally taken the damn feather out of the drawer in the nightstand one day while he was at work and cut it into little pieces and thrown it away. When he'd reached for it the next time they were having sex and found it missing, she said that Wren must have taken it for a school project on Native Americans or something.

Sometimes Alice wondered what it would be like to have someone look at her the way John looked at Georgia, with that slow, burning sexiness, or rest a casual hand on her hip the way John did with Georgia, an inch or two lower than was really proper in public, at least to Alice's mind. Duncan didn't believe in overt displays of affection and maintained a respectful distance from Alice when anyone else was around, even Wren.

“Oh, come on,” Georgia had said. “Didn't you ever go out with a Bad Boy?”

Alice shook her head. “Aside from the fact that I never really went out with anyone other than Duncan,” she said, “my mother dated nothing but Bad Boys. In some ways, my mother
was
a Bad Boy. I wanted nothing to do with them.” Which was true.

“You know what it is about John, though?” Georgia had said, suddenly serious. “He's not afraid of eye contact. When we met at the restaurant, you know, in Albany, he had this way of looking at me, where he would tilt his head to the side and look into my eyes while I talked. Have you ever noticed that? Most people—well, at least most men—are uncomfortable with a lot of eye contact. But John, he'll stare into your soul.”

It had given Alice shivers, when Georgia had said that. But still, she was glad she herself had married a Good Boy.

A
LICE
REMEMBERED
THE
day her mother and Duncan had met for the first time, two days before her wedding. They had walked over to La Chaumière on M Street, passing dogwood trees with delicate white flowers and fading pink tulips in their last moment of glory. They sat at a table near the stone fireplace, the white stucco walls glowing gold around them. The fire crackled beside them. Rita had been alone because Arnold, her latest love interest, was fishing for trout in Minnesota.

Duncan had charmed Rita; of course he had charmed her. He asked about Michigan and he asked about Arnold. He wheedled her into talking about the days when she'd worked at the fishing lure factory, when Alice was a child. He nodded as Rita told stories about her other jobs—hostess at Vickkie's Steak House, bank teller (that lasted about two months, Alice recalled), saleswoman at Jacobsen's.

Rita had a second vodka with cranberry juice and started to tell stories about Alice, about what an organized, orderly child she had been, about her straight-A report cards and perfect attendance, about her funny little collections of rocks and sea glass and Pez dispensers. “It's like she was born an adult,” Rita had said, leaning in toward Duncan with a conspiratorial smile. “I knew she'd make a great wife someday.”

Rita was thirty-eight then, her blond hair thinner, her jawline loose. But she still dressed as she had during Alice's high school years, in formfitting pants and spiky heels and wild print blouses.

“Alice could cook by the time she was six,” Rita went on. “She knew how to do the laundry, too. One time she even put out a fire all by herself.”

Duncan had raised his eyebrows. Rita had nodded. “She was seven or eight. She was a very skinny kid. I was making doughnuts; she loved doughnuts, and I wanted her to put some meat on her bones, you know? I put the oil to heat in that big old cast-iron skillet we had—remember that, Alice? You needed two hands to lift it, it was so heavy.”

Alice bit her lower lip.

“Anyway,” Rita said, picking up her drink, “I stepped outside for a cigarette and ran into a friend, and we started to chat and I forgot about the doughnuts—until the fire trucks came screaming up.” She shook her head. “Grease fire. Turns out little Alice came into the kitchen, saw those flames, and ran for the baking soda. Dumped the whole box onto that fire.
I
wouldn't even have known to do that. She'd heard it on TV. Then she called 911.” Rita beamed at Duncan. “Like I said, I knew she'd make a great wife.”

Alice saw the shock in Duncan's blue eyes, just for a second. Then he smiled and said, “My goodness!
That
must have been a surprise!” and reached over beneath the table to put his hand on Alice's knee. His touch said:
Don't be embarrassed or afraid. She is not you. I will love you and take care of you in a way she never did
.

Alice had actually dropped her eyes and looked at Duncan's hand resting there on her leg, to make sure it was real. She had reached down and squeezed his hand with her own, hard. Her squeeze said:
Thank you. Thank you for marrying me. Thank you for letting me know, finally, what it means to have a home
.

A
LICE'S
PHONE
RANG
Thursday afternoon as she was about to head out the door to teach.

“Can you meet me tonight?” he said when she answered. “For half an hour. I need to talk to you.”

She felt the same excited, queasy feeling she felt now whenever she heard his voice. It was like standing too close to the edge of a precipice, and looking down, terrifying and yet exhilarating.
Yet nothing had happened
. And nothing would, she reminded herself.

“Why do we have to meet?” she said. “Can't we just talk now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We can't talk now because you're about to teach. Once you're done, Wren will be home. The only way we can really talk is if you leave the house later.”

He knew the rhythm of her days as well as she did herself. It was amazing to think someone cared enough to pay that kind of attention. Duncan was so preoccupied with work he could barely remember that she
did
teach, let alone on what days.

“All right,” she said, against her better judgment. Even as she said it, she felt the same unsettling thrill. When, in all her thirty-four years, had Alice ever done anything against her better judgment?

They met at the park, the one near Georgia's house, where the girls had played soccer from the time they were five until a year ago, when Wren quit soccer to focus on dance. Just driving into the parking lot and pulling her car up at the edge of the field made Alice feel a sudden urge to open a cooler full of juice boxes. She had told Wren she was running out to CVS to pick up a prescription; Duncan, of course, was still at work even though it was almost nine.

John came straight from the restaurant. He parked his blue Honda at the other end of the parking lot, then walked over to her car and climbed in on the passenger side.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“How's Georgia?”

He leaned back against the seat, his head turned to look at her. “Better. Everything seems fine.”

“And Liza?”

He sighed. “That's going to take some time to sort out, isn't it?”

Alice nodded. “For Wren, too.” This is what had started it all, the conversations about how to handle the mess between Wren and Liza. Alice hadn't been able to approach Georgia about it, given how distracted Georgia was by the baby thing. So she had come to John. And that one conversation had turned into another and another. Now it was increasingly difficult to pretend that their meetings had anything to do with their troubled daughters.

John was silent. Alice sat up, her hands on the wheel, even though the car was parked, the engine off. John reached over and picked up one of her hands, held it between his own, rubbed his thumb in tender circles on her palm. She tensed, every muscle in her body on high alert, and stared at him.

“John—,” she began, but he bent his mouth to hers and stole the words from her lips, the breath from her throat. His lips were full and firm and he kissed her with a kind of hunger that was as frightening as it was exciting. She ripped her mouth away from his and backed against the car door. “What are you doing?!”

He looked at her with those heavy-lidded eyes, his lashes thick and dark, and shook his head. “I think I'm in love with you,” he said.