East Hope (37 page)

“Forgive me,” he said, and put his spoon down and reached across the table for her hand. “I think our night in Rio wore me out.”

Mary Beth smiled. She gave his hand a squeeze and resumed eating her soup. “This next year is going to be a tough one,” she said, lowering her spoon to the bowl. “Not exactly tough, but challenging.”

Will tried to listen to what she was saying while his soup cooled in front of him.

“We're looking into acquiring a German company. Drew wants to pull me from marketing and have me work full-time in mergers and acquisitions. It's a management position.” It seemed that Drew was now in the New York office. Hearing his name yet again rankled. She continued, explaining how eventually this new position would still mean some travel, and the learning curve would be steep. She'd be the youngest person in the group, the only woman too. Will was impressed with all that Mary Beth had achieved.

“It sounds like you'll still be working pretty hard.”

“I'm afraid so. But Drew said it won't mean long hours forever.”

“So when exactly will you be free to have a baby?” He heard how this sounded, like a challenge.

“You don't have to get testy.”

“I'm not.” He swallowed and tried to be more positive. “I just want to know when your job might allow for some time off.”

“You don't have to have time off,” she said quickly. “Where have you been, Will? Working women have babies all the time.”

“I know that.” He felt them both being sucked into that dark realm of adversity, she tense, he prickly, a place where compromise was impossible. He had to pull them out. “But you do have to stay in one place for a while. You know, go to the doctor, have a hospital.”

“Of course,” she said.

“All I'm saying is that when you're traveling or working long hours, it might not be the best time.”

“I'm only talking another year or so. After that my schedule should ease up.”

“I see.”

“We don't need to rush into a family.”

“No,” he added. “I suppose not.” The waiter reappeared and set down the plates of turkey, anemic slices drizzled with the purplish fig sauce.

Maybe what Mary Beth said made sense. It was going to take time to get things back to where they were. Once he found a job in New York, he could hire someone to manage Taunton's. Perhaps he could eventually convince her to spend part of their summers in East Hope.

East Hope. Will missed it, but at the same time he also missed what he and Mary Beth once had. He longed for that huge wave of happiness that had carried them along when they first met and buoyed them up in the early years of their marriage.

Mary Beth started to talk about the party she was hosting in his honor the next evening to introduce him to her friends in New York. Besides many of her usual colleagues from work, she had invited some top people from the company. “I can't believe it,” she said. “Hugh Longman, the head of the North American division, is coming.” Will nodded. “His new wife is a major deal lawyer, or so I've heard, at Millwood and Austin.”

Will raised his eyebrows in appreciation and reached again for the basket of rolls. After finishing his turkey with fig sauce, he was still hungry. This restaurant was all wrong for a Thanksgiving dinner, but at least he was here with Mary Beth. He hoped he could make his life with her right.

When Rob was little Caroline had always loved the end of the day. After organizing the adult dinner, she would sit with Rob while he ate his supper. She might have half a glass of wine while Rob pushed around his vegetables, ate his chicken fingers, or spooned mashed potatoes into his mouth. For the most part he was a good eater, and she sometimes served him bits of what she and Harry would eat later on: mushroom tortellini, wild rice with raisins, or butternut squash soufflé with sherry.

“Now, tell me about your day,” she would say, as if he were an adult coming home from work.

“Owen had to go to the nurse.”

“He did?” She put on a worried face.

“He flew up on the playground,” Rob said, meaning
threw
.

“I see,” she said, knowing that Rob's friend Owen suffered frequently from stomach bugs and other illnesses. “Poor Owen,” she would add.

After Rob's bath Caroline would take him onto her lap and read to him. They each chose one book, their bedtime ritual. By the end of the second story Rob's eyes would grow heavy and he fell asleep easily.

“Night-night, little one,” she always said, sitting at his side and stroking his soft forehead.

“Night, Mama.”

“I love you, Rob.”

He would reach up and stroke her cheek. “I love you more.”

Then Caroline would laugh and say, “Oh, no. I love you more,” giving him his good-night kiss.

When she turned out the light his small voice would carry across the darkness: “Mama, I love you more than you love me, ever and ever.” After shutting his door, she would smile to herself, knowing that he would say the same thing the very next night.

Rob's train from New York, or what she hoped was Rob's train, was due any minute. Caroline stood by her car and squinted into the sun. The trains were on a reduced holiday schedule and the platform was empty. There were a few cars in the parking lot, probably others waiting for family members coming out from the city. She pushed her hands deeper into pockets; her coat barely buttoned around her growing belly.

A grime-encrusted commuter train pulled into the station. The few passengers disembarking walked to the parking lot and awaiting cars. Caroline watched for Rob. After a few minutes everyone had gone. She stood alone by the car and, shielding her eyes from the sun, looked again in each direction. He had not come.

She got back into her car. What had she expected? Rob would not forgive her. She couldn't force him to come home for Thanksgiving. He was nineteen. In a few months he'd be twenty, and he was already lost to her. She leaned forward, resting her head on the steering wheel. So what if she'd sold the house, cleared the mortgage payments, leaving what she hoped was enough money to get through the winter? Rob didn't want to see her. She had failed as a mother. The wind picked up. A few dry leaves blew across the vacant parking lot. A moment later the baby kicked hard, a swift jab up high, near her heart.

The pungent smell of ripe cheese in the East Side Fromagerie assaulted Will's nostrils, and the handbag of the woman behind him continued to poke him in the back despite his effort to nudge forward in line. It was four in the afternoon on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and he was running the final errands for Mary Beth's cocktail party. It seemed as if everyone in New York was also on the street, all pushing along the sidewalks at a frenzied pace in the coming darkness.

Will clutched his numbered ticket. A shopping bag with four more bottles of wine banged against his legs. Mary Beth was worried that the two cases of wine delivered that morning would not be enough, and she had asked him to pick up four more bottles of white wine. He had a feeling he had bought the wrong kind. She had wanted a pinot grigio, but he couldn't remember the vineyard she had requested. After a few glasses no one would care what they were drinking anyway, as long as it was the right color, he reasoned.

“Forty-seven,” a male voice bellowed from the far end of the counter. Will looked at his number. He would be next. The long open cases and shelves behind offered more cheeses than he had ever seen in one place in his entire life. Mary Beth had instructed him to select a goat cheese, a blue, two other soft, and two hard cheeses. Will studied the array before him. There had to be twenty kinds of goat cheese alone.

The handbag behind him poked him again, and when he turned to glower at the offending owner he caught sight of a woman entering the shop, removing her hat, and shaking out a tangle of red hair, the same shade as Caroline's hair, a light red filtered with strands of gold. When she turned in his direction to reach for a number, he saw that it was not Caroline. This woman had a broad face and dark eyes. Will felt strangely let down.

“Forty-eight?” A young woman with spiked maroon hair called out from behind the counter.

Will tried to raise his arm without jostling the woman next to him. “Yes, here,” he said, and nodded toward the cheeses before him. “First, I need a goat cheese.”

“Foreign or domestic?” she snapped.

“I don't really care. It's for a wine and cheese party and—”

“So you want a log? Herb covered? Black pepper or wood ash?”

Will could hear the impatience in the clerk's voice. “That one looks fine.” He pointed at a green-speckled one. The girl picked it up with a sheer sheet of paper and wrapped it artfully on the ledge of the counter.

“And what else?”

She had a lisp or maybe something in her mouth. He tried not to stare at the row of concentric rings running along one ear or the silver stud perched in the flare of her nostril, but then caught sight of the glint of metal at the tip of her tongue. “Brie.” He looked away. “A large piece.”

“What percentage milk fat?”

This was not going to be easy. “I don't know. What's average?”

“Look, sir, nothing here is
average
cheese.” She glared at him. “There's thirty people waiting their turn.”

The tongue stud wiggled in front of him. He tried a different tactic. “What would you suggest?” he asked, deciding it would do no good to lose his temper. At this point he didn't care what he purchased. He simply wanted to get out of the crowded stores and away from people. She reached down in the case before him and lifted out a prepackaged piece of Brie with the nonaverage price of $16.98 written above a bar code.

Will recalled the Brie-and-ham sandwiches that he and Mary Beth had eaten on a picnic early in their courtship. They had frequent dates the summer after Mary Beth's graduation. Will was writing his doctoral thesis and she was working in an office before starting business school that fall. They'd seen several movies together, been to dinner a few times, and one hot August afternoon they went on a picnic at an arboretum near the university. The Brie oozed out the sides of the sandwiches with each bite. He didn't remember if they had wine, but they went back to her apartment to escape the heat, and made love for the first time. He would never forget the creamy feel of her skin and the happiness that filled him as he dozed, pressed against her as the uneven roar of the air conditioner droned into the evening.

“And what else?” The owner of the annoying handbag had moved to the other end of the store, and somehow Will manage to select four more cheeses along with the boxes of crackers that were to supplement the French bread he and Mary Beth had bought when they went out for breakfast that morning. He handed over his credit card at the cash register and winced at the $137 total, enough to feed a family in East Hope for a week.