The Transformation of Things (13 page)

Since Will was with Danny I decided to give Kat a call and see what she was up to. Back before we moved to Deer-field, before Kat had the girls, Will and Danny had watched football together nearly every Sunday while Kat and I had gone shopping or to lunch. When the weather was still nice enough, we’d sit outside, sip nonfat mochas, and do the
Times
crossword puzzle together. It was the only way either one of us could ever finish it, sharing answers. Kat said that didn’t make us dumb, just resourceful.

It had been years since I’d done the
Times
puzzle on a Sunday. Not because I didn’t have the time in Deerfield, but because I didn’t have Kat.

“You busy?” I asked, when she picked up.

She sighed. “The girls are supposed to be at a birthday party in thirty minutes, and I haven’t even gotten them dressed yet.” She paused. “You all right? You sound funny.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, thinking of her and Grant in the coffee shop, and wondering if it had been real. If she was actually cheating on Danny. “I’ve just been—”

“Sarah Lynne, do not hit your sister with the hairbrush.” The days of mochas and the
Times
puzzle were long over for Kat, too, though maybe in her case, not by choice.
Case in point, Will. Why we shouldn’t have kids. Don’t we already have enough problems as it is?
Kat sighed again. “If I disappear check the mental hospital. I may just have to check myself in.”
Or Grant’s apartment,
I silently added, though I had no idea if Grant even lived in an apartment or not. “Sorry,” she said. “You were saying.”

“Oh, nothing. I’ve just been having these vivid dreams. They’re freaking me out a little bit,” I said, leaving out the most important part.

“God, I wish I got enough sleep to actually dream.” She sighed. “Or any time to think, for that matter.” She paused. “Fucking birthday parties are the worst. And on a Sunday.” She paused. “Hey, you wanna come?”

“After that hard sell?” I laughed.

“No, really, you should come. It’s my cousin Emily’s daughter.
Remember her?” Emily. I did remember. The opposite of Kat in every way. She was such a devoutly religious member of some sect of Christianity that I couldn’t remember, that she and her husband hadn’t even kissed until their wedding night. She was a photographer who did some freelance work for
City Style
from time to time, a fact I always hid from Kelly because I knew it would make her bug me about trying to get her in, too. “Come on. I was going to sneak some vodka in my purse. We’ll watch the kids bat a piñata around and get hammered.”

“In the morning?”

“Okay. Buzzed. Slightly buzzed,” she said. “You’d be doing me a favor, really. I hate going to these things alone. Having to talk to all the bitchy stay-at-home moms. Please? Pretty please?”

And though a birthday party did not sound exactly like refuge, I was eager to get out of the house, out of my own head, so I agreed to go.

Kat was right. The Sunday morning birthday party was hell. Screaming children running through a crowded downstairs, a piñata on the chilly back patio, at which the children also screamed.

“There’s a lot of screaming,” I whispered to Kat.

She passed over her Sprite can, which I’d seen her slip the vodka into after she’d first arrived. “Have some,” she said. “It helps.”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

She shot me a look. “You’re pregnant?”

“What?” I laughed nervously. Had Kat noticed the extra five pounds and assumed? “No way.”

“Are you sure?” She raised her eyebrows. “You said you
were having vivid dreams and now you don’t want to drink, so I sort of assumed …”

“You have vivid dreams when you’re pregnant?”

“Oh God, completely,” she said. “When I was pregnant with Sarah Lynne, I had this dream that I was in Munchkin-land, you know, in
The Wizard of Oz.”
I nodded. “I was like the fucking queen Munchkin or something, and all the little people kept coming by to wash my shoes. And I swear to God, when I woke up, I really thought it was real.” She paused to take a drink out of the Sprite can. “Oh, and then there’s the sex dreams. Ironic, huh? Just when you turn into a beached whale, you can’t get enough of sex. Though in the dreams I was never pregnant. Just really skinny. Like size zero. With boobs.” She held her hands up to emphasize. “Big ones.” Kat is more like a size six and probably a B cup like me, so it was clear that her dreams were more fantasy than reality. Nothing like mine.

I laughed nervously, looking around to see if Christian Emily could hear us, but she looked engrossed in making sure some kid didn’t smash her daughter, rather than the piñata, with the giant red plastic bat. The kid’s aim was despicable, and he kept hitting the picnic table instead. “No,” I said. “Kat, it’s nothing like that. I’m not pregnant. I swear. No sex dreams.” I felt a little bit thankful that I hadn’t had any. That would be weird. I’d never be able to look at Barry, or Danny, or Grant, or maybe even Will again, if I had a dream like that. “I did have a dream about you, though.” She raised her eyebrows, and she chugged the rest of the can of Sprite. “You were with that guy Grant, who took over my old job.”

“Oh, I was?” She looked away, toward the piñata, as if she found a half-smashed Dora the Explorer the most fascinating thing in the world.

“Are you sleeping with him?”
No, fucking him,
I thought, to use her terminology, her thoughts.

“Was I, in your dream?” I shook my head. “Too bad,” she said. She took a cigarette out of her purse, but I pulled it out of her hand before she could light it. “What?”

“You can’t smoke at a kids’ birthday party.” It bewildered me that I understood this and she did not.

“I wasn’t going to smoke it for real,” she said. “Just hold it in my hand and think about smoking it.” I handed it back to her. She held it in her palm, clasped and unclasped her hand. “That’s weird,” she said. “That you dreamed about me and him.” She cleared her throat. “There have been a few times when I’ve thought about it. Him. I mean, haven’t you ever thought about another guy?”

I shook my head. It was true, I hadn’t. Things hadn’t been and weren’t the best between Will and me, but I’d never thought about cheating, finding someone else. I just assumed things would get better eventually or they wouldn’t. Another man never felt like the solution to anything.

“Well, it’s different for you,” she said. “You don’t have kids. Kids change everything.” She held the cigarette out as if thinking about smoking it, then clasped it back in her hand.

“How?” I asked.

“They just do.” She waved her hand in the air. “You know, Danny works late. I work late. Then when we get home it’s all about the kids, getting them dinner, and playing with them and bathing them and getting them to bed. Before you know it, it’s ten o’clock, you have food crusted on your shirt, and you’re more fucking exhausted than you could ever imagine. And then it all repeats. Day after day.” She held the cigarette between two fingers, and I noticed her
hand was shaking. “It happens,” she said. “People fall out of love, after they have kids.”

I reached out for her shaking hand. “It doesn’t happen to you. You and Danny. You guys are fucking Kat and Danny,” I said. I pictured them the way they were six years ago, wrapped around each other on the couch in Will’s apartment, their legs inextricably linked as if they were one person, their laughter coming in tandem as Will told a story about work, and I could still remember wishing that Will and I could be like them, could be them.
They really are the perfect couple,
I’d said to Will after they went home.

He’d nodded in agreement and added,
Their happiness is so … tangible.
So if Kat and Danny couldn’t survive, then what chance would Will and I ever have?

Kat laughed wryly. “That was a long time ago,” she said, as if she, too, was remembering that same night—just about a month before Will and I got engaged, when she and Danny were still an entity of perfection. “Now we’re just tired. And,” she added, “we haven’t had sex in six months.”

I thought about the way Kat had felt when she was with Grant, that warm spark, the tingling in her legs. It must’ve been the way she’d felt once with Danny, and I knew it was the way I’d felt with Will. She had to be able to get that back with Danny. She had to. Because if she could, that meant that maybe Will and I had a chance, too. “Hey, you know what?” I said, without really thinking it through. “You and Danny should go away for the weekend and let me and Will watch the girls.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Of course,” I said, because once it was out there, I was totally serious.

“Okay, I’ll talk to Danny about it. Maybe.”

“Any weekend you want, okay? Will would be excited about it.” He probably would, probably would think it was a great way to convince me that I wanted a baby, though, as I watched Sarah Lynne wildly swing the red bat, I knew it would probably do just the opposite.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Just tell me one thing. Where were you, those times with Grant, when you were tempted?”

“In the coffee shop,” she said. “The one below the office that we used to go to all the time.” I nodded and I tried to look calm, though my heart was pounding rapidly in my chest. I thought about the smell of the coffee, sitting in the plastic chair while I felt his leg brush against hers. “Is that where I was, in your dream?” she asked.

“Oh no,” I lied. “Of course not. You were at my sister’s house,” I lied again, surprised by how easily it came out.

“Weird, huh?”

She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Thanks for coming with me.” She paused. “And don’t tell Will about the vodka. He’ll tell Danny, and then Danny will be pissed, drinking when I’m with the kids, and blah, blah, blah.”

“Don’t worry.” I squeezed her hand back. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Lying in bed, that night, alone, Will still down in the study, I thought about him. And just before I fell asleep, I wondered what he would say if Danny had asked him about me, about us, the way I’d asked Kat.

I was standing in my office, staring out the window. Just below the courthouse, there was an entire world,people moving, doing things: a mother pushing her baby in a stroller, a family walking into the used book store across the street. I closed my eyes and imagined myself walking on the street, going somewhere, doing something.

I heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” I called out, but I didn’t step away from the window. I couldn’t.

“Judge.” I heard Janice’s voice, and I turned away from the window. “Is this a good time?”

I sighed and gestured to the chair across the desk. “Have a seat.” With the weight of the baby in her stomach, everything about Janice seemed swollen, even her eyes, which were dark brown, the color of chestnuts.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.” She paused. “I just want to tell you that I don’t think I’ll be coming back. After the baby.” I nodded. “I’m really sorry. I love it here, but Rick and I talked about it, and it’s just too much time. I don’t want to miss everything with her.”

“Is that all?” I asked. I saw her eyes swell up, begging me to tell her it was okay. So I did. “Look, Janice. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure you’re not mad?”

“No.” I sighed. “I’m not mad. “

“Okay. Good.” She nodded. “I’ll start looking for my replacement then?”

I nodded and turned back toward the window. The mother on the street was still there, sitting on a bench, lifting her baby in the air.

It’s not fair, I thought, as I heard Janice walk away. Not fair that she can leave. Just like that.

I rolled over and reached out my hand for Will. He murmured and rolled toward me. “Where did you want to go?” I attempted to whisper into the darkness, but my mind hung somewhere in blurry half sleep, and I couldn’t force the words from my lips.

Fifteen

W
ill spent most of Thanksgiving morning on the couch, watching football, while I spent it throwing my nervous energy into pies—pumpkin, apple, and pecan. I always did the pies because Kelly couldn’t bake to save her life. She was an excellent turkey roaster and potato masher, but she managed to ruin every baked good she ever touched. Hence her penchant for Tastykakes.

I still hadn’t told my father about anything that had happened to Will, or to me, for that matter, and I was hoping we’d be able to get through the dinner without it coming up.

As I sliced apples, I remembered a night from my childhood: It was snowing, and my mother was standing at the stove making soup, the bones of her face protruding in this unnatural skeletal manner, her chestnut wig on a little crooked. She kept stirring the soup, looking out the window, watching for him.