The Hopefuls (18 page)

Viv woke up shortly after I put the lasagna in, and Ash took her over to the couch to feed her. I sat next to her, but Matt and Jimmy stood having a drink in the other room. (Mostly I think, because Matt looked uncomfortable as soon as Ash started unbuttoning her shirt.)

I'd heard Matt tell Jimmy about the senate seat, and heard Jimmy say, “Oh man, that sucks,” and then move on to another topic. I couldn't tell if he didn't want to dwell on it for Matt's sake or if he just didn't know how upset Matt really was. Ash and I chatted on the couch about breast-feeding and how sore her nipples were, a conversation that I'm sure Matt was happy to miss. By the time the lasagna was ready, Viv was fed, burped, changed, and already sleeping again. We all stood looking at her for a moment before sitting down. “I mean, all she does is sleep and eat,” Jimmy said. “She has it pretty good.”

I cut the lasagna and scooped it onto the plates, concentrating so hard on keeping the cheese from dripping onto the table that I missed part of the conversation and only tuned in when I heard Matt say, “Really? Congratulations!”

“Congratulations for what?” I asked.

“Jimmy got a job at Facebook,” Ash said.

“I didn't want to curse it,” Jimmy said. “So I didn't tell anyone I was interviewing. I just got the offer today.”

“Wow,” I said. “That's great.” I held up my glass and we all clinked. I couldn't bear to look over at Matt as we did this, but I snuck a peek at him as Jimmy started talking. Matt looked somber while Jimmy described his position as policy communications manager. “They have an office in Houston, too,” he said. “So eventually we can make that move.”

We didn't make any plans before consulting the Dillons and vice versa—there was no party we RSVP'd for, no new restaurant we tried, no vacation we booked without discussing it with them first. We were a team, the four of us. Or so I'd thought. But that night, as Jimmy spoke, I felt something like distrust. It was so similar to what had happened the last time he got a new job that I had a sense of déjà vu as he spoke.

I couldn't tell you what we talked about for the rest of the dinner—we weren't there all that long. Viv woke up again and I insisted on cleaning up, loading the dishes into the dishwasher as quickly as I could. The timing of this couldn't have been worse, Jimmy getting a great new job while Matt was still dealing with his disappointment. And I couldn't stop thinking how strange it was that Matt told Jimmy everything but that it didn't work the other way around.

When we got home, Matt went to the kitchen for a beer. I wanted to ask him if he felt the same way I did, like the Dillons were keeping things from us, but even in my head it sounded paranoid. Maybe it was just that I'd thought our friendship was more than it was. Ash once got drunk and told me that she and Jimmy liked to role-play in the bedroom, that she owned a dirty schoolgirl costume for this very reason. And Jimmy always joked about the first hand job Ash had given him, how awful it was, how he thought she'd permanently harmed him but continued to date her anyway. I'd just assumed that friends who would tell you that much about their lives would tell you everything. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'd been wrong about them all along.

But I didn't want to upset Matt any more by talking about it, so I just opened my own beer and the two of us sat on the couch with the TV on, staring straight ahead, but not really watching.

“I wonder if they'll move soon,” Matt said finally, and I didn't mean to sound as irritable as I did when I replied, “Who knows what they'll do?”

The next week, Celeste came to our house to clean, and at one point she said, “It's so exciting about Mr. Jimmy's new job.”

“It is,” I said.

“It will be exciting for him at the Facebook.”

I smiled at Celeste, wondering when she'd found out about the job. I imagined Ash telling her about the interview weeks earlier, unable to keep it in. And when Celeste said, “It's going to be very big,” as she ran her dustcloth over our shelves, I just nodded and said, “Very big.”

When the Dillons told us that April that they were moving, I cried. Ash did too, and we hugged like we were never going to see each other again. But to be honest, there was a part of me that felt relieved, that thought maybe it would be better for us if we didn't spend so much time with them. They were just so lucky, so charmed. Everything was working out for them, life was unfolding exactly as it should—and most of the time, it seemed like it was all happening without any effort on their part. And when they sat and marveled at Viv and Jimmy talked about his new job, Matt and I would watch them, more aware than ever of what we didn't have. Sometimes when we were around them, I'd feel a sharp sense of betrayal, like they'd left us behind.

But I never said any of this out loud. Instead, we went over to their apartment the night before they left, sat in a circle of lawn chairs (all of their furniture was gone), and drank vodka out of plastic cups. And at the end of the night, when we hugged good-bye, I said, “What are we ever going to do without you here?”

I
sat on the bed and watched Matt pack his suitcase, carefully, as he always did. He was an unusually slow packer, folding a shirt over and over to get it right, rearranging piles to make sure they fit just so. Usually, I teased him about it, sometimes setting a timer to see if he could set a new record. But he had the same look he'd had on his face for over a month now—mouth set in a straight line, eyebrows wrinkled like he'd just heard unpleasant news—and I knew he wasn't in the mood for a joke.

“Are you bringing your running shoes?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking up.

“Okay. And you think we should leave by ten a.m. tomorrow?” At this, he just nodded. I waited a few seconds and then said, “You know, if you don't want to go we can skip it. Or go later in the week.”

Matt looked up, surprised. “I never said I didn't want to go.”

“I know. It's just you seem…” I tried to find a nice way to say angry or annoyed.

“What?” he asked.

“I don't know, never mind. It was just a suggestion.”

“Plus, we can't skip it. My mom would have a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

Matt's parents spent most of the summer at their house in St. Michaels, Maryland, and during the third week of August the entire family joined them. Throughout the summer, Michael's and Will's families went up there other random weekends, and so did Meg, and sometimes even we did too. But Babs was firm on the fact that no matter what, she wanted everyone together for one week. No excuses.

This trip never really felt like a vacation to me, mostly because the Kellys weren't the kind of family who slept in or sat around reading novels in the sun. They took boats out on the water, played badminton or football, organized tennis tournaments and swimming races. They never sat down. It was like spending a week at a weird adult athletic camp with highly competitive campers.

Matt had spent the whole summer focused on Dan Cullen's senate seat, unable to let go of (what he kept calling) his missed chance. He was obsessed with what he should do next and it was almost impossible to have a conversation with him about anything else. Once, he even (God help us) used the word
legacy.
He kept mentioning classmates of his from Harvard (all wildly successful, of course) and comparing himself to them, like everyone he graduated with was going to think he was a failure.

Part of me thought he'd be calmer with the Dillons out of town, but it soon became clear that he missed being able to discuss his career with Jimmy and so I became his default sounding board on all things relating to Matt's Career, and it was wearing on me. It was wearing on us. And I didn't think a solid week with his family would help the situation.

“All done,” Matt said, zipping up his suitcase. “What about you?”

“Yep,” I said. “All packed and ready to go.”

We didn't get on the road until almost 10:30 the next day, which I knew drove Matt crazy. It only took about an hour and a half to get there, but Matt liked to be the first to arrive, because in the Kelly family, even the drive to vacation could become a competition.

“We'll be fine,” I said, when we got in the car. “There's no rush to get there.” What I meant, of course, was I'm in no rush to get there. I picked up the coffee that Matt had gotten for me and took a sip. He'd added just the right amount of cream, and it tasted perfect. I drank my coffee and stared out the window, knowing that this would be the most peaceful part of my week, trying to savor the quiet.

I never considered myself to be unathletic until I started going to St. Michaels with the Kellys. I played volleyball in junior high and soccer in high school and maybe I wasn't the best on the team, but I certainly wasn't the worst. I was coordinated. I could stand upright and hit a ball. I played shortstop for the
Vanity Fair
softball team, for Christ's sake.

But my first year in St. Michaels, things changed. During a heated volleyball game, Will spiked the ball over the net and it hit me right on the nose. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me through the net with a scrunched-up face. “Everyone, take five,” he shouted to everyone who was playing, as if they didn't see the blood that was spilling out of my nose. Will led me inside, sat me down in the kitchen, put a bunch of ice cubes in a baggie, and wrapped them in a towel for me to put on my nose. I'd met Will just a few times before this trip, and I was mortified to have him see me like this.

“It's okay,” I kept saying to him. “Really, I don't think it's broken.” I had no idea if it was broken or not, but it felt like I needed to reassure him. He was looking at me nervously, like he was afraid I was going to start crying.

“Keep the ice on as long as you can,” Will said. Matt had taken his nephews out on a kayak, and Will kept looking at the door hoping that he would show up.

“You can go back out,” I said. “I'm okay, I promise.”

“Are you sure?” Will asked.

“Yes, I'm totally fine. I'll just sit here with the ice.” I wanted desperately for him to leave then, and he finally did after patting me on the shoulder and telling me to “hang in there.” I listened to the volleyball game resume outside, and stayed in the kitchen until the bag of ice started to melt and drip down my face.

My nose wasn't broken, but it did swell up and I had two light purple bruises underneath my eyes. There's a group picture from that trip that Babs has hanging in the kitchen, of everyone standing on the dock. Someone must have taken it from a boat on the water, but I don't remember who. (It seems like something they would have had me do, since we weren't engaged yet and Babs didn't like to have non–family members in family pictures.) I always look at the picture when we go to their house—the shot is far away, but you can still see that my nose is lumpy and miscolored.

On the last night of the trip, when Will knew it was okay to joke about my nose (and probably couldn't help himself any longer, because the Kellys needed to make a joke out of everything), he stood up and toasted me. We were all eating crabs, as we always did for the first and last meals of the trip, and Babs had laid out newspapers on the table and put metal buckets in the middle for the shells. Everyone had mallets in their hands, and I was concentrating on my crab, trying to ignore the splashes of butter and pieces of shell that were flying everywhere. (After these dinners, the smell of Old Bay and crab lingered everywhere.)

Will stood up and wiped his hands, then hit his mallet lightly against his beer bottle. He cleared his throat. “I'd just like to take a minute to announce that the volleyball MVP award will be going to Beth, who was willing to use any body part to stop the ball. Well done, Beth!” He held up his bottle and chanted, “Hip, hip, hooray!” until everyone joined in.

The whole table clapped and cheered, even Nellie, who'd said, “Oh, Will,” in a halfhearted defense of me when he announced my name. I knew that I had to smile, so as not to seem like a bad sport, a killjoy who couldn't take a joke, and so I did even though it made my nose throb. Matt put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to him, but he was also laughing. That was the thing about the Kellys, they always thought they were so damn funny.

When everyone quieted down, Babs reached over and patted my arm. “Don't worry about it, dear. Not everyone is an athlete. We all know that.”

And I swear to God, with those words I lost any athletic ability I had. It was like the Kellys cursed me. In the vacations that followed in St. Michaels, I fell while running bases, tipped over a canoe, and wiped out on a bike. The harder I tried, the more of a danger I was to myself.

This was never my favorite week of the year, but this time I was really dreading it. Normally in St. Michaels, Matt and I were a team. He watched out for me and brought me Band-Aids when I inevitably hurt myself and started to bleed. We'd go to our room at night and laugh about the things that Babs said to Rebecca, and how drunk Nellie got at dinner. But this year was different. Matt and I were on strange ground—I was at my limit with his career crisis and he was well aware of that. We'd had some snippy exchanges lately, each of us feeling that the other was the one being insensitive. There'd been a few times when I was in the middle of telling a story or talking about work and Matt cut me off to start talking about himself, as if he didn't notice we'd been having a completely different conversation. When I tried to point this out to him, he'd become huffy and told me that it didn't feel like I was supporting him. I was afraid he was losing his mind.

In the car on the way to St. Michaels, Matt said, “Maybe I should start looking in the private sector now, get some experience that way.”

“Maybe you should,” I said, although I knew he didn't really want my opinion. I was only half paying attention—I'd found it was the best way to get through these long discussions.

“I wanted another year or two in government, but maybe that's not going to happen. Jimmy said he loves Facebook. That it's the perfect job.”

“Did you ever notice that Jimmy loves everything he does?” I asked him. “That he thinks everything is perfect and amazing. Don't you just think that's his approach to it? That he's spinning it that way?”

“I think,” Matt said, “that he just keeps getting really fucking lucky.” And then we were quiet for the rest of the ride, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

When we pulled up to the house, Grace and Lily were already in their swimsuits and running around the grassy area by the pool, playing some sort of two-person tag and squealing whenever they got close to each other. Meg was in a bikini and sunglasses, lying on her back on a lounge chair, an unopened magazine next to her. She looked like she was sleeping, which she probably was since she'd driven up with Will and Nellie's crew early that morning.

Michael and Will were standing at the end of the dock, each holding a beer, with a large metal bucket at their feet that I knew held ice and more beer. Our nephew Bobby was on the lawn with Jonah, tossing an inflatable ball with him. Bobby was almost twelve and was always very sweet with the younger kids, unlike his brother, Ben, who loved to tease them and who I suspected was a bully at school. Rebecca was on the screened-in porch, wearing her sunglasses and watching Jonah and Bobby like a hawk, like she was just waiting for something bad to happen. She raised her hand at us in greeting, but didn't smile.

Matt couldn't get out of the car fast enough, opening the door at the same time he turned the ignition off. “I'm going to say hi to Michael and Will,” he said, already walking toward the dock. I stood and watched everyone for a few seconds, and took a deep breath.

The Kellys' place was on a beautiful piece of land, nearly three acres, with one large house and two tiny cottages behind it. There was a pool, and a screened-in porch that overlooked the grass heading down toward the water, and a stone deck on the side of the house with six Adirondack chairs, painted a cheery red, all lined up in a row. There was also an outdoor fireplace, where we gathered most nights after dinner so the kids could roast marshmallows.

Charles and his four brothers had bought the property almost thirty years earlier, and used to bring all their families up at the same time. Now they mostly took turns, although Charles and Babs used it most, not shy about telling everyone that they had invested the most in the place and had the right to do so.

Above the front door, there was a sign that read:
THE
PANCAKE
HOUSE
,
EST
. 1970
. The first year I went there, I turned to Matt in disbelief (I'd already heard the Patrick Pancake story by then), and he just smiled and shook his head and told me that Pancake was the surname of the family who'd owned the house before them. “My dad and my uncles got a kick out of it, so they left it up there,” he said. The two cottages behind were called Bacon and Eggs, because one was yellow and one was brown and I guess they decided to stick with the breakfast theme. Patrick and Rebecca always stayed in the little brown cottage, and at least ten times during the vacation, one of the Kelly brothers would ask, “Where's Pancake?” and wait for someone to say, “He's in Bacon,” so they could all laugh.

Matt and I were always shuffled around to whatever room or cottage was left—we were childless and could stay anywhere. One year, we'd stayed in Eggs, which offered more privacy but meant we had to cross the lawn to get to the bathroom in the morning, so it was a trade-off.

This year, we were in the main house with most everyone else. Babs put us in a bedroom that opened right up onto the lawn with a great view of the water. Patrick, Rebecca, and Jonah were in Bacon (as always), and Eggs would be split evenly between the nieces and nephews, each of them getting three nights there and sleeping on the floor of the living room for the last night. (There had been a fight over how to divide the uneven number of days at Sunday dinner a few weeks earlier, and it had resulted in so much screaming and crying that Babs declared Eggs would stay empty for a night to keep the peace.)

I left the bags in the car, deciding that Matt and I could bring them in later, and went to join Rebecca on the porch. Last year, Jonah had still been young enough that he couldn't really keep up with the other kids. Now he was old enough to play with them and Rebecca seemed out of sorts without him by her side. He was laughing and clearly having fun with Bobby, and she looked like it was torturing her.

“We thought you'd beat us here,” Rebecca said as I sat down.

“Believe me, Matt intended to be the first one here. We just had a slow morning.”

She nodded. At the end of the dock, Matt was holding a beer and talking to his brothers, waving his hands in an excited way, and I wondered what he could be telling them.