The Transformation of Things (24 page)

I nodded, appreciating the gesture. It was cold, but I also knew she wouldn’t be able to smoke inside.

Inside felt astoundingly familiar—the smell of rich coffee, fireplace, and muffins—and not just because I’d been here so recently in my dreams, but because Kat and I had come here so often when I used to work here, every afternoon, just around this time, just around the time when the day was starting to feel stretched too long, and we were getting weary in our dimly fluorescent lit offices. We’d both order skinny lattes, and then linger at a table in the corner for twenty minutes or maybe even half an hour, our reporter’s notebooks open in front of us, so it looked like we were working, even though we rarely ever had.

We walked up to the counter now, and Kat ordered first, a decaf chai tea. Tea. And decaf.
You’re a different woman now,
I thought. And though it should’ve seemed obvious, I still found this surprising.

“I’ll have the same thing,” I echoed, wanting to show that I, too, had changed, had become someone a little worldlier or a little wiser, though really, I would’ve much rather had the latte, much rather been that girl who could sit in the corner and laugh, and blow off work, and feel as though the heavy things in life were too far away to bog me down.

We stood by the counter waiting a few moments for our drinks, not saying anything, Kat kicking the tile floor with the pointy toe of her boot. After the barista handed us our chais, I followed Kat to our former usual table.

“So,” she said, blowing on the hot tea and then taking a small sip, keeping her eyes on the tea the whole time.

“So,” I said back. I took a sip of my tea, which was too sweet and burned my throat. I tried not to grimace as it went down. It wasn’t really the hot tea but the quiet between us that really bothered me. “Are you still mad?” I finally said, when I couldn’t take the silence anymore.

She shook her head. “No, I’m not mad.” She sighed. “You were right. I knew you were.” I nodded. “But I just didn’t want to hear it, you know?”

“Oh, Kat,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up like that. I should’ve stayed out of it.” I left out the part about how hard it was to mind your own business when dreaming as a person made it feel like it completely was your business. “And just so you know, I never left you for my friends in Deerfield. It wasn’t like that.”

“I know.” She waved her hand in the air. “I was just jealous.”

“Of my Deerfield friends? Don’t be,” I said, thinking that
if only she knew,
if only she knew,
the way the perfect surfaces of their lives were even more cracked and worn than hers. At least with Kat, what you saw was what you got—loud and sometimes brash and sometimes too abrasive—but she put it all out there anyway.

“No.” She shook her head. “Of you. I was jealous of you.”

“Of me?” Maybe she couldn’t see me any more than I’d been able to see her before I’d started dreaming. “That’s silly.”

“No,” she said. “You had the balls to quit your job, and move to the suburbs, and go after what it was you really wanted in life. And me?” She laughed and rubbed her fingers nervously together, as if running them over an invisible cigarette. “I’m still here.”

She’d mistaken my quitting for living out my dream, rather than what it really was: pretending, playing house, playing judge’s wife, playing high society lady. “You have nothing to be jealous of,” I said quietly. “If anything, I’m the one who should be jealous of you. You have direction, a career, two beautiful girls.” And maybe I had been a little jealous of her, before I’d dreamed about her, that was, before I knew that those things, the satisfying career, the so-called perfect marriage, the children, did not equal happiness.

She shook her head. “They are beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” I agreed again. “They are.”

“It wasn’t about Grant, you know,” she said. “It was never about him.” I nodded, waiting for her to continue. “I hate my job,” she confessed. “It bores me. I think that’s why I let myself pay so much attention to him—I needed something to get me out of bed, some reason to keep coming to work.”

Maybe Kat had always been bored. She’d been the one initiating our e-mail crossword puzzles and our coffee breaks, and I’d willingly gone along. She was infectious, and I’d loved
every minute of it. Maybe it was being friends with Kat that had made me feel alive, not the job, and I felt relieved that I hadn’t been able to get the job back after all. “You could quit,” I suggested.

“I know,” she said. “But it’s not that easy.” She paused. “This is all I know. All I’ve ever done.” She finished off her tea and then looked at me and smiled. “I mean, it’s one thing to be a crappy parent if you’re at work all the time. But what if I’m always home, and I still fuck it up?”

“You won’t,” I said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t.” I paused. “But you won’t. I know you won’t.” I thought about the way Sarah Lynne and Ara both were beautiful and loving little girls, and I knew that despite what she thought, Kat was already doing something right.

“Well, I’m fucking up my marriage,” she said.

“So am I,” I agreed, but as I said it, I considered whether I still was, or whether Will and I had turned some sort of corner.

“Oh please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You and Will.”

“You and Danny,” I said right back, even more emphatically.

“I know.” She sighed. “You know why I never actually fucked Grant?” I shook my head, wanting to hear, because I had already just assumed that she had. “It was something that you said.”

“Me?” I considered the power of the herbs, the dreams, to have allowed me to change something, to change the course of Kat’s life, and the throbbing in my head was now temporarily feeling worth it.

“Yeah,” she said. “Something you said at your wedding.”
My wedding. So it had had nothing to do with the herbs. Theherbs had changed nothing real.
“You were getting dressed in that dressing area, and I was pinning your veil in your hair. We had some champagne, and you lifted your glass to toast. And then you said, ‘To me and Will having even just a glimmer of the spark that you and Danny have. Or something like that.”

I nodded. I had a vague recollection of champagne, a lot of it, and blathering something about wishing Will and I could be as great as them, something I’d always been afraid wouldn’t happen, that no matter what, we’d never shine as brightly in a room as the two of them.

“Anyway,” she said, “I better get back up there before Hank sends the police.” She rolled her eyes. She stood up and leaned in and hugged me close, so very affectionate and un-Kat-like. I hugged her back, held on tightly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in my ear, and then: “Thank you.”

“No,” I whispered back. “Thank you.”

That night, as I lay in bed, Will curled up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, and then this feeling of utter calm came over me, this feeling that everything was going to be all right. Maybe what Kat said was true, maybe we were Jen and Will. Will and Jen. An us. A we.

“I saw your prescriptions on the counter,” Will whispered softly in my ear, as if he was reciting a love poem, something romantic. The calm dissipated, and it was instantly replaced by this cold blast in my chest and the return of my throbbing headache. It was a stupid thing to do, leaving them out like that, leaving them there for him to see, when I hadn’t decided what to do about either one of them. I’d been so caught up in meeting Kat that I’d forgotten all about them.

“It’s no big deal,” I whispered back. “Dr. Horowitz gives them to me every year. Just in case.”

I waited for him to protest, to make it a big deal, but all he said was “It’s good to have options.” Then he curled in closer. “I’m coming home early tomorrow. I planned something special.”

“Why?” I whispered, feeling warm and drowsy again.

“It’s Valentine’s Day.” He lifted up my hair and kissed my neck. “Will you be my Valentine?”

“Of course,” I whispered, wanting to ask him to be mine back. But I was too tired and the words caught in my throat. Instead my mind had drifted back to the genetic tests, and I wondered if whatever doomed me also doomed Kelly, if the two of us were linked in a terrible way. For a moment I missed her.

“Kelly,” Beverly said, “the kids need new clothes. You can’t dress them like this to go to a party.” I picked Hannah up from her crib. She sucked her thumb, and she looked adorable in her Old Navy jeans and pink sweater. “A girl should wear a dress. To a party, for heaven’s sake. I’m embarrassed for you.”

“Bever—Mother,” I corrected myself. “It’s too cold for her to wear a dress.”

“Tights,” she said. “Wool tights, dear. That’s how Kathleen always dresses the girls.”

I was sure the girls had tears in those wool tights within five minutes from screaming in a tantrum on the floor, but I decided not to mention that, because I knew it wasn’t going to help anything.

“And really, when are you going to get her ears pierced? Kathleen got the girls’ ears pierced at six months.”

“I don’t want to get her ears pierced when she’s so young,” I repeated for what felt like the thousandth time.

She shook her head. “Just because she has two older brothers doesn’t mean she can’t look like a little girl, you know.”

“Hey there.” Dave poked his head in.

“Dave, come in here,” Beverly said. “We need a man’s opinion.” I rolled my eyes at him. He pretended not to notice. “Now don’t you think your daughter should wear a dress to a party?”

“Sure,” he said. “A dress is nice.”

“Or jeans and a sweater are fine.” I glared at him.

He put his hands in his pockets and shifted nervously. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not good with this fashion stuff. I’ll leave it up to you ladies.” He leaned in and kissed me on the head, but I shrank back. You bastard, I thought.

I looked down, and when I looked up again, the room had changed.

We were sitting in a big, airy dining area at the Deerfield Inn, the same room where Dave and I had our wedding reception. Hannah bounced on my lap, in a dress, and Caleb and Jack squirmed in their chairs on either side of me. “I’m hungry,” Jack whined, ignoring the steak on his plate.

“I have to pee,” Caleb announced.

“Can you hold it?” I said. He shook his head.

I tried to get Dave’s attention to help with the kids, but he was across the table, deep in conversation with Mark Fitzmaurice, the accountant for Daniels andSons. “Do you want me to take him?” Beverly asked.

I didn’t, but I also didn’t want to drag three children in there by myself. “Thanks,” I told her, not feeling thankful at all.

As they walked out, my father and Sharon went up to the front of the room. Sharon tapped her glass of rum and Coke with a butter knife. “Listen up, everybody,” she cackled. “Donny and I have an announcement to make.”

The room got quiet, except for Hannah, who pounded on the table with a spoon. “Well,” Sharon said, “after all these years, Donny is finally making an honest woman out of me.” Shit. “He’s asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted.” She leaned up and kissed him quickly on the lips, and I had to look away. I felt this overwhelming sense of nausea.

Beverly walked back in, holding on to Caleb. “What’s all the ruckus? What did I miss?”

“They’re getting married,” I said, swallowing the rest of my glass of wine too quickly.

“Oh, how nice for you, dear.” Beverly patted me on the shoulder. “Now you’ll have two mothers.”

Hannah was still pounding with the spoon, and the noise, the news, made my head want to explode, made me want to stand up and scream.

Two mothers. Beverly’s words echoed in my head. Two mothers.

No mom. Mom is dead, dead for so long that she has been forgotten, and every piece of where I came from has nearly been obliterated.

Twenty-seven

I
woke up with a pounding headache, my heart exploding in my chest. Kelly’s thoughts were still so fresh in my head, it was as if they were my own thoughts:
Every piece of where I came from, obliterated.
My father and Sharon were getting married.