If I Could Turn Back Time (2 page)

But it gave me a moment’s pause, as that sort of thing still did, to think about my own daddy and the fact that he
wasn’t
here. That he’d never be here. And the fact that I still hadn’t managed to find my way completely over that fact.

This wasn’t the time for mourning, though. This was a fun occasion, a party. I wasn’t going to let myself slip into the maudlin.

Sammy poured expertly into tilted flutes so the foam didn’t rise over and spill any precious liquid gold, and handed them to me one by one to distribute. One for Kristin, one for Melanie, one for Ray, one for Ronnie, one for Larry, and one for—

“None for me,” Lisa said, holding up her hand, her diamond wedding ensemble glittering madly in the sun.

“Oh, come on.” I laughed and held it out to her. “Since when do you not want champagne? Particularly when it’s the good stuff!”

“Nope. I’m serious. I … I’m just going to have water.” Her face went a little pink.

Slow to the punch, I grew concerned. “Are you sick? You’re kind of flushed.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine. Better than ever.”

This still didn’t register at all. Dumb, right? “Okay,” I said slowly. “If you’re sure.…”

She met my eyes and smiled. “I’m drinking for two now,” she said in a stage whisper, then patted her board-flat belly with her hand. “Or, rather,
not
drinking for two.”

Ding ding ding
. “You’re
pregnant
?” I was so shocked I didn’t bother to keep my voice down, so of course everyone turned their attention to our conversation.

Lisa didn’t seem to mind, though. She reached her hand out for Larry’s and said, “We are.”

Good lord. Not only was Lisa—
Lisa!—
pregnant, but she was also suddenly a
we are
sort of person. This wasn’t the woman I’d been hanging out with at all.

“Well…” I didn’t know what to say. “Well. Congratulations!” I raised my glass to them, and everyone else followed suit.

“Congratulations!”

Then, of course, everyone crowded around the couple to ask how had this come about, had they been planning it, did they know yet if it was a girl or a boy, and did they have names lined up. All those things everyone always asks in situations like this.

Honestly, it seemed to go on forever, though, and Lisa seemed to tell the “Free Bird” version of the story about peeing on a stick, then another, then another, and so on, until she ran to Larry, who was on his stationary bike, holding six positive pregnancy tests with, presumably, urine-covered hands, though she didn’t mention that part. I don’t know why, though, since she seemed to go on about every other detail anyone could possibly come up with, right down to, and including, the fact that one of the little red lines was pink and that threw the other five positive tests into doubt for them, so they went to the doctor the next day for a blood test, and … blah blah blah. The story was endless. Seriously. The extended dance version of the oldest story on earth.

I felt an embarrassing little ping of irritation that my thirty-eighth birthday eve—so horribly close to forty—had been overshadowed by toasts and congratulations for Lisa’s unexpected pregnancy, but I squelched it immediately. What a self-centered jerk I was being! A total baby, feeling proprietary about people’s attention when, really, it was just another day like any other. Lisa and Larry had wonderful news, a life-changing event, and I wanted … what? To be patted on the back for the magnificent feat of not dying by age thirty-eight? It was shameful.

Though, seriously, no matter when she
got
pregnant, was this really the time and place to announce it? Could she not know that her previous partner in crime—me—might feel a little weird about being ambushed by this news of her total acquiescence to domestication?

Because it was clear that this was not the end of the story; Lisa was never going to go back to being the fun person I remembered. Now she was a mother. A hugely proud, almost cocky mother. And as great as it was that she’d gotten what she evidently wanted—it was apparently a dream come true for her—how could I be anything less than supportive?

I told her how happy I was for her, of course. What a great mother I knew she’d be, based on what a great friend she’d been. How strong their family would be, because of her incredible bond with Larry, though privately I thought they’d fought and occasionally broken up over the dumbest things on earth. So how on earth could any sane person think this union would last and get stronger in the presence of a small being who wailed like a harmonica played by a first grader, pooped and peed in their pants,
could not
be ignored without calling attention to child protective authorities, and needed constant attention for more than a decade before they could even be counted on to go to bed when instructed, and even then you only had like two years before they snuck out six hours later…?

No, I wasn’t exactly jealous of Lisa. But I already missed the times we’d had—the times we’d never have again—and more than anything I missed imagining that a baby would come along and turn two people into a wonderful family. I hadn’t believed that in years, because I had never seen evidence that it happened.

No super-happy families around me!

Not that I was in the business for it. Finance professionals at my level barely had time to breathe, much less form relationships. As long as the market was open, there was no taking my eyes off it. I could see that the guys I worked with always ended up screwed if they formed close relationships. Inevitably they started feeling stifled and, eventually, suffocated.

How could I feel jealous?

Yet, undeniably, I felt left behind. And I felt like I was suddenly being faced with questions I had to ask about the decisions I’d made in my life. The sense of a ticking time bomb was indisputable.

I’d made a lot of mistakes in my life. Was this the biggest one?

CHAPTER TWO

As the group chattered on, I felt Sammy put an arm around my waist and say, loud enough to be heard by the others, “Come on, chickie, let’s go catch us some rays, eh?” He took the bottle and signaled a deckhand in the kitchen to bring more out.

No one really noticed as we walked away, but the announcement had been a nice gesture anyway.

“That selfish cow,” Sammy said scathingly. “She didn’t need to bring that up
now
, of all times.”

Of course, this bit of cattiness was completely validating for me, as he knew it would be, even though I said, “I did put her on the spot by insisting she have champagne.”

“Oh, please.” He settled his blue eyes on me, and even though what he was saying was tacky and uncalled-for, the sincerity was truly written all over his face. Which made it almost worse. He felt sorry for me. “She could have taken the glass and set it down after the toast. She
wanted
this. Next thing you know, she’s going to be opening your presents!”

I laughed outright. It was a funny visual, and even though
obviously
Lisa would
never
do such a thing, in a way it was kind of consistent with her personality. Her shallow party-girl personality was exactly what I’d always found fun about her; how could I expect her to turn it off now that she really
was
going to be the belle of the ball for nine months?

“You’re being an asshole for me and I love you for it.”

We clinked glasses and lay down, turning our faces to the sun.

“This is nicer than having another euphemism-filled conversation about golf with Ray anyway,” Sammy said. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Did I tell you he made a pass at me at the Memorial Day party?”

“What?” I gasped. “No, you did not! There is no way; he and Kristin have been together for like three years now!”

“So? I’ve turned straighter men than that before.”

“I don’t believe it.” But I did. Sammy could almost coax
me
into bed if he wanted to, and I knew his habits better than anyone.

This was a different crowd than I’d grown up with. Once upon a time, life had been simple for me. Full of what you’d think of as “normal” people, not characters out of central casting.

All that had changed, though. When you enter a world of big stakes, there are big personalities with big lives and, more often than not, big differences from the population at large. Honestly, I wondered sometimes why I had any popularity at all, because inside I felt like the same suburban girl I’d always been, counting coins with my father and hoping to someday have a four-bedroom brick house with one-sixteenth of an acre and boxwoods, azaleas, and a viburnum bush under my bedroom window, just like when I was growing up.

“Ohhhh, he wanted it bad,” Sammy continued, oblivious to the leaps my mind and memory were taking. “But he gave up fast. Chickenshit. As soon as I brushed him off, he began doing that dance where he was pretending that anything I’d rightly interpreted as an advance was a misunderstanding.”

I smiled and nodded and took a long gulp of champagne. “I know that dance. I got it from Bill Whitestone himself once.” President and CEO of the company. Turning him down could have lost me my job.

But taking him on almost certainly would have. Eventually.

Sammy laughed and pointed at me. “I
knew
it! I always suspected he had a hard-on for you. Ever since that company picnic you made me go to with you on Roosevelt Island that time. I could just
tell
he had the hots for you.”

“He has the hots for everyone.”

“Especially the women he can’t have.”

“Yeah.” I took another sip of champagne. “It’s really pretty icky, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

A few minutes passed in silence. I looked at the rolling swells of the sea in the distance, thinking how this was a dream-come-true for so many people—even just a day on the water like this—yet I was bored. Unfulfilled. Already thinking about going home alone.

Even looking forward to going home alone.

Once upon a time, I’d thought money could buy everything to make me happy. Well, not
everything
, I guess—we all know the clich
é
s—but I did think that it could buy a lot of things
I
wanted. For instance, when I was a kid and had a modest $5-per-week allowance, that was enough for two Bonne Bell Lip Smackers (the large ones). Or
almost
a week’s worth of Good Humor ice cream at the pool. (Inevitably, Saturdays I’d be out of money and disappointed, scrabbling for a place on the white lines of the hot black parking lot, with just enough to buy some horrid Laffy Taffy.)

As I grew older, I learned even more the power of retail therapy, hitting the department stores for good makeup when things went bad, and then—glory be!—Sephora opened.

It was hard to feel like anything was wrong in my world when I was sitting on the sofa with a bunch of new products to try out.

But, as anyone knows or could guess, they weren’t actually all that fulfilling. I’d had real tragedy in my life and I’d decided very early on that it wasn’t worth it to suffer and anguish over things. Much better to skim along the surface, enjoying the simple pleasures.

“You seem down,” Sammy said. And for once he wasn’t on the edge of a punch line. There wasn’t a joke in his eyes, ready to come out and lighten the mood. He was just serious. And very, very correct. “Really down,” he added with a sobriety I wasn’t in the mood to face.

“Oh.” I gave a laugh. “I’m just trying to picture Lisa as a mother. All the little Kate Spade purses she’s going to have to find.” Annnnnd, truth be told, I was picturing
me
as a mother. If there was a Kate Spade diaper bag to be had—and there probably was—sure, I’d probably want that as well. But when I thought about babies, I thought about chubby cheeks, and hands, and feet, and gummy smiles, and bright eyes, and the promise of love forever. The promise
to
love forever. That’s one part people don’t often think about, though it’s important: those who have been disappointed, or even fickle, in love aren’t necessarily happy for their solitary existence. When you feel like the world has let you down time and again, and at the end of the day your friends all return to their own lives, a life without love can be devastatingly lonely.

I’m not sure that every childless person feels that way. I suspect that
that
is the feeling that separates those who
know
they don’t want children from those who
say
they don’t want children.

I was, more than likely, in the latter group. Though I was trying like hell to convince the world I was in the former.

Sammy wasn’t buying it. “You were like this before her big announcement. Though I definitely take your meaning on the little Kate Spades and Ralph Laurens. Though they’d be pretty damn cute.”

“I know.”

“Not that you want that.”

“Of course not.” Our eyes met.

A moment passed. “Seriously”—he put his hand on mine—“what’s up, Tiger Lily?”

It was impossible to answer. I’d been feeling down lately, no question about it. No explanation either. The Dark had come over me unexpectedly, without obvious explanation or reason. Was thirty-eight too young to be going through perimenopause, in my family? I needed to ask my mother. I hadn’t spoken to her in about a month anyway, so it was a good excuse for me to call. It would give us something to talk about, since normally all we did was
not
talk about her jerk of a husband or my
lack
of a husband.

I was glad she’d found someone, finally, after my dad died so young, but did the guy really have to be such a domineering asshole?

“Who’s a domineering asshole?” Sammy asked.

“What?”

“Who are you talking about?” He poured more champagne into my glass. “Jeffrey?”

“I didn’t realize I said that out loud.”

Sammy lowered his chin and raised his brows, lifting the champagne bottle pointedly. “Have you had enough to drink?”

“Not today.” I took a big gulp and held the glass out for more. “Fill me up, buttercup.”