Immediate Family (19 page)

I
t’s almost enough to make me want another one.” Emerson gazed down at the baby, asleep in her cradle.

Stevie peered over her shoulder. “I notice you said ‘almost.’ Though I have to admit, she is pretty cute.” Ruth Jaden Richman, named after Franny’s grandmother, was the image of Franny, her face squinched in determination as she held a tiny fist tucked under her chin.

When Franny had announced that she was having a naming party for Ruth, traditional for Jewish girls in lieu of the ritual circumcision for boys, Stevie had immediately booked a flight. Keith had flown out as well, as had Jay’s parents, seeming somewhat dazed by the unorthodox arrangement that had resulted in this grandchild.

The only one absent was Vivienne. Stevie wondered if she was ever coming home. Jay must have wondered, too, because he’d apparently moved on and was in the process of building a life without her. These days, all he could talk about was the baby. Stevie couldn’t help noticing, too, his new protectiveness toward Franny and the way he’d reacted when Keith had shown up. Jay went out of his way to be friendly, but it seemed forced, as if he secretly resented Keith. And from the proprietary way Keith acted with Franny whenever Jay was near, it was obvious he’d picked up on it, too.

“If only they stayed this little forever,” Emerson said, with a sigh. “Just wait until she’s older. You’ll be worn out trying to keep up with her.”

“I have a ways to go until then,” said Franny. “Right now my biggest worry is diaper rash.” She bent down to smooth Ruth’s blanket, looking like a Fra Angelico madonna with her curls framing a face made radiant by motherhood.

“I’m surprised you’ve had to change even one diaper, the way Jay hovers over her,” Stevie teased. Franny shot her an odd look, making her wish she’d kept her mouth shut. Jay’s role in all this was clearly a sensitive subject.

“He’s like any proud papa,” Emerson said, quick to smooth it over.

“Except he knows it’s not for keeps.” Franny spoke quietly, gazing down at Ruth.

“He’ll still see her,” Emerson said. “And when she’s older, she can fly out to visit him.”

“I know. But it won’t be the same.” Franny looked sad.

“Have you set a date yet?” Stevie asked, knowing that Keith was getting antsy.

“Please.” Franny sank into the rocker, landing on a squeeze toy that let out a muffled squeak. She extracted it from under her and tossed it onto the floor. “I’m exhausted enough as it is without having to pack up all my things and move to the other end of the continent. I can’t even think about that until Ruth is at least sleeping through the night.”

She glanced around the alcove off her bedroom that she’d painted a pale yellow and stenciled with characters from nursery rhymes. It was so small, there was room only for the wicker cradle and matching dresser, and the padded rocker she sat in.

“You’ll love living near the beach,” Stevie told her. “Think of how much fun you’ll have building sand castles with Ruth. Not to mention all those romantic moonlit strolls on the beach,” she added with a sly smile. An image formed in her mind of her and Ryan, on their first date, walking along the beach at night, the surf rolling in over their feet.

“The most romantic thing we’ve done lately is watch
Sleepless in Seattle,”
Franny said. “And I fell asleep halfway through.”

“Shouldn’t we be whispering?” Emerson asked in a hushed voice, as the baby stirred in her sleep.

Franny smiled and shook her head. “This one? She’d sleep through rush hour on the Bruckner Expressway.” She was as relaxed about this baby as Emerson had been fretful with Ainsley. “Though when she lets loose you wouldn’t believe the set of lungs on her.”

Stevie shot Franny a bemused glance. “Gee, I wonder where she gets that.”

“Luckily, she’s good most of the time,” Franny said. “And when she does cry, Jay’s there to pick her up.”

Stevie and Emerson exchanged a look. Ever since Franny had brought Ruth home from the hospital, Jay had been practically living at her apartment. He slept on the sofa bed, but still it struck Stevie as awfully connubial for a married guy and a woman engaged to another man.

But what did she know? The only guy she’d ever really cared about she’d let slip through her fingers. She thought of Ryan once more and felt a dull ache. It had lessened somewhat with time, and even that made her sad, because it meant she was letting go. Something he’d done months ago if the rumors she’d been hearing, not just from Liv, were true.

It had been sweet torture going to see his new film, about the joint efforts of a community led by a charismatic minister to rebuild their West Virginia coal-mining town that had fallen on hard times, aptly titled
With These Hands.
She’d half-hoped to find it saccharine, or worse, moralizing, but instead she’d been deeply moved, as much by the knowledge that she’d once shared a life with someone so gifted as by his portrayal of his subjects. She wasn’t surprised when it earned him his second Oscar nomination, and with the Academy Awards ceremony just weeks away, she was secretly rooting for him to win.

If only I’d had as much faith in our relationship,
she thought.

If he’d still cared enough to hear it, she’d have told him that things had changed.
She
had changed. She had a better understanding now of why she’d been so terrified to walk down the aisle. It wasn’t because she feared Ryan wouldn’t make a good husband, but that she’d make a lousy wife and mother. What did she know about keeping house? She’d grown up in a household where there was never enough money and they’d had to move from one funky rented place to another. In the absence of a father, the only men in her life had been teachers at school who’d taken an interest and helpful neighbors who’d pitch in when a fuse needed changing or the car wouldn’t start.

The men Stevie had dated when she grew older proved just as transient. It wasn’t until Ryan that she’d let her guard down and started to believe it could be different with him. Until push came to shove, that is.

It was only recently that she’d started to believe marriage wouldn’t be so bad after all. Grant had been the key. For the first time in her life she knew who she was and where she’d come from. Out of that had come the realization that there was no such thing as an ideal dad…or an ideal relationship. It was about taking the bad with the good; accepting that there would be days when everything about the other person rubbed you the wrong way.

But she would probably never get a chance to tell Ryan all that. He’d moved on. And so should she.

With a small sigh, she joined her friends as they trooped out into the living room, where the other guests were gathered. The naming ceremony was brief but meaningful. Emerson and Stevie, as joint godmothers, took turns holding Ruth as the rabbi intoned the Hebrew blessings and Franny and Jay each made a little speech. There were blessings said over the wine and challah as well, then platters of food were brought out—bagels and cream cheese and four different kinds of smoked fish along with various salads and condiments and the noodle pudding Franny’s aunt Bella had made. Stevie loaded up her plate and carried it over to where Emerson sat, in the corner by the bookcase. The room was so crowded there were no other seats, so she had to perch on an arm of the chair.

She inquired about Reggie and learned that things were still at a stalemate. The only good news was that, with the investigation dragging on, he’d been granted another extension. Though as far as Emerson was concerned, he might just as well be in Nigeria. She hadn’t seen him since their breakup and there was no sign of a reconciliation in the offing. Despite her best efforts to look as if she were having a good time, she appeared forlorn, sitting there perfectly upright with her legs crossed at the ankles and a teacup and saucer balanced on one silk-stockinged knee: a portrait of a woman quietly suffering beneath her carefully composed facade.

“Don’t you think he’s overreacting a bit?” Stevie commented. “I mean, it’s not like you accused him or anything.”

“I questioned his integrity. It’s the same thing.”

“You had no choice. You said so yourself.”

“I know what I said, but I was wrong.”

“I hate to ask you this, but are you a hundred percent sure he’s
not
a terrorist?” As a reporter, Stevie knew you sometimes had to dig to get all the facts.

“If he is, I’m in the wrong profession,” Emerson said. If reporters dealt in facts, publicists knew all there was about spinning them and could spot a fake from a mile away. “Anyway, a terrorist would’ve taken out my mother while he had the chance,” she added, smiling faintly. “No one without the patience of a saint could’ve put up with her as long as he did.”

“So he’s gone from a terrorist to being a saint?”

Stevie’s effort to lighten the mood had no effect. Emerson sat sipping her tea, looking off into the middle distance. “No, a saint would have returned my calls. He’s hurt and he wants me to know it,” she said. “Besides, even if he decided to forgive me, unless a miracle happens and the State Department intervenes, what good would it do?” Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. “I should have married him while I had the chance. Now it’s too late.”

Stevie’s gaze swept the room, but nobody seemed aware of the quiet drama taking place in their corner. The other guests stood chatting with one another or helping themselves to the food. Franny was talking to her friend Hannah Moreland, from work. Jay was sharing a few laughs with his buddy Todd. Across the room, Jay’s mother was deep in conversation with the rabbi. While within earshot of where Stevie and Emerson sat, several women from Franny’s Lamaze class exchanged their own hair-raising tales of childbirth.

Stevie brought her gaze back to Emerson. “I guess that puts us in the same boat,” she said, thinking of Ryan.

Emerson turned toward her. “So what do we do now?”

“As opposed to spending the rest of our lives kicking ourselves, you mean? When I have it figured out, I’ll let you know.” Stevie stabbed with her fork at a piece of creamed herring. “How’s Ainsley taking it? From what you’ve told me, she and Reggie were pretty close.”

“She keeps asking why he had to go away, why we can’t see him. Try explaining to a seven-year-old that it’s because her mother is ten kinds of idiot.”

“Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”

“Okay, make that eight kinds of idiot.” A corner of Emerson’s mouth turned up in a halfhearted smile.

“She still doesn’t know about you two?”

Emerson shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Stevie leaned into her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll get through this. Life sucks sometimes. But the good news is, it keeps on going.”

Emerson tilted her head up to look at her. “Are we talking about my love life or yours?”

Stevie shrugged. “Both, I guess.”

The sun had come out, the showers that had been predicted nowhere in sight. The streets were blocked off from Highland to Orange, and the first of the limos was pulling up in front of the hospitality tent, where early arrivals sipped refreshments and schmoozed with one another while awaiting their turn to step through the metal detector and onto the red carpet lining Hollywood Boulevard. The world’s media was out in force; TV crews packed the risers along the west side of the boulevard, the bigger stations and networks with their own ministudios, and print reporters were stationed across the way. It was some of the most valuable real estate around, each tiny plot as jealously guarded as oceanfront property in Malibu.

Stevie had an advantage in that she was among those in the first row, just behind the faux boxwood hedge, where she could snag celebrities as they passed by on their way to the preshow platform to be interviewed by the likes of Joan Rivers and Mary Hart from
Entertainment Tonight.
From where she was positioned, she could see the entrance to the Kodak Theatre, flanked by a two-story-high Oscar, and across the way the old Roosevelt Hotel where the very first Academy Award ceremony was held back when Hoover was in office.

On either side of her were CNN’s Gunnar Swenson and MSNBC’s Jeff Moody. She’d known both men for years and had even shared drinks with them on occasion after a hard night covering an event, but today it was every man for himself. No one would cut her any slack, and if either of them was to try to muscle in on her, they’d feel the business end of the no-nonsense shoes she had on under her vintage Mary McFadden evening gown.

Now the limos were pulling up one after the other, and the people in the hospitality tent had begun trickling out onto the red carpet. First among them Christian Slater with his date, and an unescorted Sharon Stone in a slinky, crystal-beaded gown. They made their way through the thicket of reporters calling out their names, amid a blaze of handheld lights and camera flashes. Stevie felt a flicker of sympathy for the nobodies on the arms of somebodies—if you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be invisible, she’d been told by one Hollywood wife, go to the Oscars—before she was swept up in it all, her only thought snagging the next celebrity sound bite.

Stevie all but lunged over the faux hedge to capture Brad Pitt’s attention. He’d arrived solo, as godlike in person as on the screen, something that couldn’t be said about every movie star. There were those with bad skin and heads too big for their bodies, women enviably slender on the screen who looked emaciated in person, leading men who couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall.

The one thing they all had in common was star quality. Even the homely ones glittered, and the collective glow of so many in one place was nearly blinding. This was Stevie’s twelfth year covering the event, and she never failed to be knocked out by it. It took all her experience to maintain her professionalism as she zeroed in on Nicole Kidman, ethereal in a gown made up of layers of pale rose chiffon, and moments later snagged Angelina Jolie as she was gliding past, trailing a black velvet train. It wasn’t until she came face-to-face with the last person she’d expected to see that she momentarily lost her cool.