The Transformation of Things (17 page)

“Why don’t you use the other bathroom?” I suggested to Sarah Lynne.

She folded her arms and shook her head. “No. I’m going to use
my
bathroom.”

“It’s my bathroom, too,” Ara protested.

“Come on, Ara,” I prodded. “Can you go a little faster?”

She sighed deeply in a way that reminded me so much of Kat that it startled me. “Fine.”

I felt my hands shaking. I was sweating, not sure what to do or what to say to hurry her up, nervous that Sarah Lynne was going to pee on the hardwood floor. But after a few minutes, Ara got up, and Sarah Lynne promptly ran to the toilet.

I took a deep breath. “Should we get dressed?”

Sarah Lynne shook her head. “We have to brush our teeth first.”

After ten minutes of fighting over the tube of toothpaste, I found some clothes and managed to get them on the girls, despite both of them deciding they wanted to have a spontaneous dance party. Ara didn’t like the outfit I picked out at first and started crying, until I let her wear red pants with a red sweater, despite my protests that they didn’t match. “They do,” she said. “Red and red.”

“Don’t even try to argue,” Sarah Lynne informed me.

So I didn’t. But I wondered where she’d gone, sweet Ara who wanted to look like me, and how she’d turned into this whiny little creature. I’d had a moment, leaning into Will last night, when I’d believed him, when I’d actually believed that maybe I could do this. I closed my eyes and thought about the perfection of the lilac on the snow, and then the chaos that broke the moment. And last night, with Will, felt very far away.

I heard footsteps, and I watched Will stumble out of the guest room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was still in his clothes from yesterday, and his hair was sticking up and uncombed. He looked almost handsome in the way he seemed to have come undone, defenseless in a way.

“Uncle Will,” Ara cried. “Look at my outfit.”

“And mine, too,” Sarah Lynne said.

He gave them the thumbs-up. “Very nice,” he said. “Who wants to watch the Wiggles?”

“I do, I do,” the girls chorused. They ran toward the living room.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Will called after them. He turned to me. “I didn’t hear them get up.” He offered a meek smile.

I shrugged, not willing to admit that I’d been feeling overwhelmed. “You looked comfortable. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I was comfortable,” he said, reaching up to tuck a stray hair behind my ear, and it occurred to me that I was also undone, my hair uncombed, my face unwashed, my teeth un-brushed.

“I’m a mess,” I said.

He shook his head and reached his thumb up to stroke my cheek. “No you’re not.”

“Uncle Will,” Sarah Lynne screamed from the other room.

“You’d better go,” I whispered. “I’ll make some breakfast.”

After lunch, Sarah Lynne and Ara fell asleep on the couch, and then Will and I sat at the table, reading the Sunday paper. I made an attempt at the
Times
puzzle, but my brain felt too foggy to get more than a few clues. “Need some help?” Will asked, when he saw me put the pencil down.

I shook my head. “I’m too tired to think.”

“Me too,” he said, but even as he said it his eyes had a certain twinkle to them, so I knew he’d enjoyed this. Will was cut out to be a father. He grabbed my hand across the table. “Jen,” he said, and I swallowed a lump in my throat, knowing what was going to come next. I thought about the way he’d felt as I leaned against him last night, his body warm and entwined with mine in a way that I’d felt completely whole, completely safe. And why couldn’t that just be enough? “Jen, you’re good at this. We’re good at this.”

I thought about a baby, about what it might be like to hold this small and perfect being, an entirely blank slate that we would be wholly responsible for. This thing, this innocent thing that would rely on us, that would need us. “Will, I …”

“Oh my God,” Kat said. I hadn’t heard her come in, but I turned toward the sound of her voice, grateful for the interruption. Her face looked radiant, aglow with something I hadn’t seen from her in years. “The girls are both asleep.”

“Will wore them out,” I said.

I smiled at him, and he nodded; a flash of disappointment crossed his face, which he quickly turned into a smile for Kat. “Your girls are a lot of fun,” he said.

“Well, whatever you two did, you need to sell it and bottle it to parents everywhere.”

“You had a nice time?” I asked.

“Fucking fantastic,” she said.

“I second that,” said Danny, who walked in behind her, put his arms around her, and kissed her shoulder.

Nineteen

I
t was after six by the time we got off the train and into my SUV. Will put the key in the ignition and turned to look at me before turning on the car. “Let me take you out to dinner.”

“I don’t know,” I said, dreading the possibility of finding our way back to that baby conversation again. “I’m exhausted.”

“You owe me a dinner, remember?”

I had promised him a rain check the night of the auction, and I realized I was starving, so I agreed.

“Great.” He paused. “Where do we go?”

It had been years since we’d gone to dinner anywhere but the club. And before that, in the city, we’d dined at the fancy restaurants that I reviewed, compliments of the magazine.

I tried to remember where’d I’d gone before I met Will, in college even. There was a bar named Henry’s not too far from
my father’s old house, and there was a little diner just south of there where I’d gone with my friends in high school. “Where do other people go?” Will wondered out loud.

I thought of Lisa, Bethany, and Amber, the club; Kat, the city. Then I tried to remember where Kelly went. “You know, I think Kelly and Dave and the kids like Applebee’s,” I said. I knew there was one not too far from their house, at the edge of a little strip mall, across the street from Acme. I’d met Kelly and the kids there for lunch once.

“Yes.” He nodded. “I just saw their commercial the other day.”

We looked at each other and we both started laughing, this crazy, giddy, tired laughter. What kind of couple didn’t know where to go to dinner? Kelly had made fun of me on more than one occasion for not dining anywhere but the club.
My God, you’re like freakin’ Barbie and Ken,
she’d retort with a dry laugh.
Actually, according to Sarah Lynne, I was freakin’ Barbie,
I thought now.
So there, Kel, take that.

Will turned the key and pulled out of the parking space, and then stopped the car. “Where the hell is it?” he asked.

I started laughing again, and it took a few minutes for me to stop enough to give him directions.

Applebee’s was oddly crowded for a Sunday night. Families and high school kids milled all around out front clinging to their plastic buzzers that the hostess told us would blink and sing when it was our turn. Will and I sat on a bench out front and waited. Will put his arm around me and I leaned into him, and let myself enjoy his warmth.

After twenty minutes, Will jumped when our plastic buzzer buzzed and flashed red. And then we were led to a tiny booth
near the back of the restaurant. “It’s happy hour,” Will said, sounding a little giddy as he picked up the menu. “I think I’ll get a drink.”

I looked at the drink menu, and had an instant craving for a margarita, even though it had been years since I’d drunk anything but wine. “I’m going to have a margarita,” I announced. “On the rocks, with salt.”

He nodded and smiled. “Perfect.” When the waiter came, we ordered two, and we let ourselves be talked into a plate of half-priced nachos and two chicken something-or-other combo plates.

At the club, we drank only wine, and only red wine, Merlot or Cabernet: heart healthy, trendy, and a perfect pairing with filet mignon. Our appetizers were escargot or half-shell clams or shrimp cocktail.

As I took the first sip of my margarita, the salty-sour taste burned my throat and warmed my brain. Then, as I started munching on a nacho, I started to feel this odd sensation of warmth that made me feel like I was glowing.

Will drank his margarita quickly and I followed him, drinking it down too fast to enjoy the salty-sour combination and fast enough to feel a little dizzy. “Another round,” he told the young waiter when he popped back around to check on us.

Will reached across the table for my hand, and underneath the dim Tiffany light fixture, his face hung in a shadow, so he looked only slightly familiar, like someone I’d once known a very, very long time ago. Like a man, a stranger, sitting at a half-circle booth in Il Romano, who I might have the possibility of falling in love with.

The second round of margaritas came, and we drank them more slowly through straws, one-handed, not letting go of each other across the table.

“You look beautiful, Jen,” Will whispered, somewhere between the nachos and the chicken something-or-other.

“That’s the margarita talking,” I whispered. Because I hadn’t taken a shower since yesterday morning or even had time to put on makeup today.

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not.” He paused. “Hey,” he said, taking another sip. “Tell me one thing you want.” The words rolled off his tongue, effortlessly, as if it was something he still said to me all the time, something easy.

I paused for a minute, not knowing exactly what to say. Then I shrugged.

“Just one thing,” he whispered.

So I said the first word that popped into my head: “Love,” I whispered. I gently squeezed his hand, as if it was my lifeline, my safety. He squeezed back.

Then the din of the crowded restaurant faded away, and there was nothing else but me and Will. Will and me.

After dinner we walked around the strip mall until Will felt sober enough to drive home. I held on to his arm, as we walked slowly past the shops of Oak Glen, a T. J. Maxx, a PetSmart, a Hallmark store. “Let’s go in,” Will said when we got to the Hallmark. He opened the door before I could answer, so I followed him inside.

In the front of the store there was a display of tiny ceramic figurines, anyone and everyone you could imagine molded and painted and looking like exact replicas—cats and dogs, teachers and doctors. I noticed a judge, and I suddenly felt dizzy and closed my eyes for a moment to try to regain my equilibrium.

When I opened them, Will was holding something, a figurine, in his hand. “I’m going to buy this for you,” he said. He
opened his palm and held it out so I could see it—a man with his arm around a woman holding a sleeping baby against her chest. The woman had her head turned, and she was looking up, smiling at the man who smiled back at her.

“Will, don’t—”

“Sssh.” He put his finger to my lips. He turned the figurine over. On the bottom, it had a price tag, and a name, “The Perfect Family.” “It is the perfect family,” he whispered. Then he handed the figurine to me.

“You shouldn’t buy this for me,” I said, the lightness of the margarita now feeling very far away, and instead, my head was starting to feel dull, achy.

“I’m not trying to rush you,” he said. “But I saw the way you were this weekend. You were so great. That’s all I was trying to tell you before.” He paused. “Just let me buy this for you as a promise, a reminder. A someday.”

“Okay,” I agreed softly. “A someday.”

Between the margaritas and the weekend, Will looked exhausted when we got home. He lay down on the bed, fully dressed, and fell right to sleep that way for the second night in a row. I took my time in the bathroom, examining my face for something as I brushed my teeth. I wanted to see it there, something in my eyes, something that told me I could be someone’s mother. But I only saw what I always did, green eyes, a little tired, a few new crow’s-feet. I stared too hard for too long, searching for something, and the glare from the bathroom lights started to hurt my eyes, started to make my own image feel too bright, unreal, so I had to look away.

I slipped under the covers and turned away from Will. I felt him shift, lean toward me, and put his arm around me. He mumbled something in his sleep. My eyes were too heavy to
really wonder what it was, to wonder if he was trying to tell me that he loved me.

And just before I drifted off to sleep, I thought about Kelly’s lilacs.

I was standing in Kelly’s house. There was noise everywhere, colors, light, music. The sound of the bathwater splashing. I looked down and saw the splashing right in front of me: Caleb and Jack playing with a boat. Hannah deliberately slapping her hands on the water, soaking the front of my shirt. My head was pounding from the noise, the light, the sound of the word Mom over and over and over.

The world skipped, like a broken record.

And then there was silence. I was sitting in the dark in the rocking chair in Hannah’s room with Hannah on my breast, sucking quietly and softly. This feeling overtook me, an overwhelming exhaustion, and then, when I looked down at Hannah, her pudgy soft little cheeks, puffing in and out and swallowing, there was something else. This overpowering sense of love, an emotion that filled up so heavily in my chest that I felt it swell, that I felt it about to burst.