Patti and I go with the pomegranate-tinis and snack on baked Brie, crackers, and delicate clusters of red grapes while catching up with Raine and Suze. Across the room by floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows, Lucy is having a heart-to-heart with Kate and Ellen. I’m glad to see Lucy here, although she doesn’t look well at all.
Monica arrives moments later, but tonight she’s not alone. She’s brought—God forbid—Marta Zinsser.
My jaw drops as Monica and Marta enter the sunken living room decorated in grays, pewter, and shots of icy lilac. I crumple the cracker in my hand.
What is Monica doing? Doesn’t she know about the bad blood between Marta and me? Or is Monica too immersed in her younger son’s world at $15,000-a-year Little Door, a point she used to work into almost every conversation?
Monica introduces Marta around the room, leaving Patti and me for last.
“Girls,” Monica says with her too wide smile, “do you know my friend Marta Zinsser? She’s a Points Elementary mom, although I think she would have loved Little Door.”
As Monica talks, I keep thinking that something about her looks different. She still has my hairstyle, but her teeth aren’t the same. They’re huge. Long. She’s had them capped. But the veneers are a little too big. They look like—gulp—horse teeth.
“It’s nice that you’re able to join us,” Patti greets Marta.
I nod my head, my smile fixed. “Hello, Marta.”
Marta’s smile is just as superficial. “I didn’t realize you were in a book club.”
My eyebrows lift. Does she think I can’t read? “I just show up for the wine,” I answer coolly.
“That’s not true,” Patti contradicts. “Taylor started the book club. It was her idea. Then she enlisted me and I enlisted Kate, and the group grew from there. We’ve been together for how long now? Four years? Five?”
“I think Taylor likes the idea of being in a book club more than she actually likes reading book club picks.” Monica laughs. “She thinks most of our selections are depressing.”
I shrug. “I do. Sad stories of the poor and working class.”
Monica laughs again. “Taylor can’t relate to blue-collar America.”
I wish I really were mean. I’d spill my drink on Monica’s slouchy pale gold knit tank, a tank that looks suspiciously like one hanging in my closet. In fact, the whole outfit—tank, wide gold belt, and long gold skirt—is Chanel, or knock-off Chanel.
“Is that a new ensemble?” I ask Monica, shifting gears.
She preens. “My personal shopper located it for me after I told her about an ad I saw in a magazine.”
Or on my body, I think sourly. “I have the same top, but I didn’t buy the skirt. It was just a tad too glitz for me.” I walk off to refill my pomegranate-tini.
Patti joins me at the table. She cuts herself a small sliver of pâté and spreads it on a cracker. “You do have that top, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
Patti takes a teeny bite of her pâté and cracker. “You know, she’s just jealous of you, Taylor. You’ve got it all—”
“My life isn’t always what it seems.”
“No, but it is pretty damn nice. Nathan is yummy. You have a brilliant marriage, and you live this beautiful, picture-perfect life on the lake with three picture-perfect children.”
“Looks can be deceiving.” I nibble on a grape. “Patti, do my teeth look like that?”
Patti stares at Monica a long moment before bursting into a fit of giggles. “Oh. My. God. What did she do?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not good.”
“No.” Patti’s giggles subside. Her expression turns sober. “Do you think she knows they’re way too big?”
“I just don’t know why she did it. Her teeth were fine before.” I sigh, suddenly exhausted by what we do to ourselves and how we try to impress. “Sometimes this is all too much. Too much work. Too much stress.”
“What are you saying? That being Taylor Young is hard work?”
“Doesn’t it ever seem like hard work to you?”
“Of course. But that’s just life. Life is hard, don’t you think? Now get your book and let’s snag the couch before anyone else does.”
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the book discussion tonight is actually interesting for a change.
I don’t know if it’s the copious amount of wine we’re consuming or because Marta’s sitting in tonight, but everyone participates, although I tend to once again be the dissenting voice.
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
is an unqualified hit. Except with me.
“I loved the opening,” I explain, “and the first third seemed to move along all right, but then it just started to drag. I needed more character development. I needed change.”
“There was change,” Suze defended, “near the end where he helps that poor pregnant girl.”
“After she untied him?” I shake my head. “I think that’s when I stopped reading. It was too much. I couldn’t suspend disbelief. Deliver your own baby, give away one child, keep a secret, don’t confront your wife about her affair, but please, don’t get tied up in a shanty shack in the South.”
My words are met by a torrent of protests and comments. Shaking my hair back, I catch Marta’s eye. I could almost swear she’s smiling.
At me
.
Or maybe she’s laughing at me.
Probably laughing at me. Oh, I don’t care. It was a good book but not my favorite book, and I don’t have to pretend to love it just to get everyone’s approval.
A half hour later, the meeting is at an end. “You’re picking next month’s book, Lucy,” Raine says, wrapping things up. “Do you have a title selected yet?”
Lucy nods and reaches into her purse and shyly pulls out a hardcover book. “
The Feminine Mistake
by Leslie Bennetts.”
“No!” Suze groans. “No, no, no.”
“I don’t want to read that book,” Monica adds flatly, “I’ve read enough on it already to know I definitely don’t want it to be our book club pick.”
“Why not?” Lucy asks nervously, putting the book on her lap and hiding the cover with her hands. “I thought Taylor had a good idea when she said we should read some nonfiction this year.”
“Memoirs, yes, but not feminist rhetoric,” Monica answers sourly.
Marta’s eyebrow rises, and she leans forward. “So you’ve read the book, then?”
Monica’s shoulders square. “No, but I don’t need to read it. I’ve heard all about it, and I’m sick of the Far Left attacking traditional family values—”
“It has nothing to do with family values,” Marta interrupts. “It’s about financial self-sufficiency.”
“But it’s a moot point for most of us,” Suze protests. “Our husbands might be the breadwinners, but we make most of the decisions for the family—”
“Including financial?” Ellen interrupts.
“Not necessarily financial, but we’re equal partners,” Suze answers defensively. “We have our own division of labor.”
“Which you don’t get paid for,” Ellen adds.
Suze shuts her mouth, shakes her head.
“If it’s a really controversial book,” Raine speaks softly, “maybe we don’t want to read it. We have enough problems in life without adding to it.”
Lucy sighs. “I don’t want to force you to read a book you don’t want to read, but I do think it’d be interesting. We could see for ourselves what the fuss is about. We’d be better informed about hot topics, too.”
Suze looks increasingly unhappy. “I don’t like hot topics. I don’t like negativity. I want to focus on positive things—”
“But aren’t the books we’re reading depressing?” I can’t help interrupting. “Every one of the novels on this year’s list is about tragedy and dysfunction.”
“But they’re well written,” Monica protests.
“And so is nonfiction,” Marta says. “And isn’t being informed a positive thing?”
“Yes,” I say firmly, reaching for the book and looking at the cover, surprised to hear myself agreeing with Marta.
Patti nods. “I say yes, too.”
Jen and Kate are two more yeses. Marta doesn’t cast a vote, which makes Monica anxious. “Do you think you’ll want to come back?” she asks Marta.
“Probably not,” Marta answers honestly.
Monica is crestfallen. “Why not?”
“It’s not really my . . . thing.”
Monica’s even more perplexed. “But why not? You told me you read all the time.”
“Yes, but this . . .” Marta glances around the circle. “It’s not . . . me. It’s a little too Stepford wife for my taste.”
Suze gasps. Kate’s surprised. Monica’s beyond flustered. “It’s not a Stepford wife book club. We’ve all been to college, and we’ve all had careers—”
“Good, then reading controversial books shouldn’t be upsetting.”
“So
The Feminine Mistake
it is,” Jen says brightly, bringing the meeting to a close. “Kate hosts next month. See you in November.”
Patti doesn’t even wait until she’s backed out of Jen’s drive to drop the bomb on me. “We’re moving,” she says bluntly, heading east on 8th Street. “Don’s been hired by a Bay Area investment firm, and they’ve asked him to start November first. He’ll start soon, and then we’ll move around Thanksgiving.”
I’m stunned. It’s the last thing I expected her to say. “I can’t believe it.”
“Don and I are both native Californians. We like it here and all three of our children were born here, but our families are in California, and to be honest, we miss the weather. We miss the sun.” She looks at me. “And California’s not that far. We’ll still see you. You and Nathan will just have to pop down for the weekend, do some fun weekend trips like wine tasting in Napa or golfing at Pebble Beach.”
I can’t even imagine life here without Patti. She’s been here as long as I have. “I can’t believe it,” I repeat numbly.
“I’m still kind of in shock, too. We’ve been really happy here, and while Don’s from the Bay Area, I don’t know anyone there. I’m nervous about starting over, trying to fit in, but this is a good move for Don and there’s no way I could let him move without us. We need to be together.”
Every word she says is a knife in my heart. This is how I should have been with Nathan. This is how I should have reacted.
Great, Nathan, I’m excited by the opportunity. I’ve always wanted to live in Omaha. . . .
“How’s the cost of living?” I ask tentatively.
“Terrible. Even worse than here. A million dollars buys nothing on the peninsula. We’re already house hunting, and we’re definitely going to end up with half the house we have here.”
“But you’ll have the sun.”
“That’s right. I tell myself we’re paying for the great weather.”
She falls silent, and we drive without speaking for a minute. “Taylor, I do feel terrible that I’m leaving you solely responsible for the auction, and if you weren’t you, I’d worry about the auction, but you are you and you’ll do an incredible job as chair. Let’s face it, you don’t really need me there.”
“But I do.” I’m sad, really sad. I don’t want to do the auction without Patti. I would never have agreed to chair it if I thought I’d have to chair it alone. “I do need you.”
Patti pulls into her driveway. Looks like we’re not even doing coffee. My spirits sink about as low as they can go.
“You know you can run things by me anytime,” she adds. “I’ll just be a phone call away.”
Nathan gone, and now Patti. I swallow hard. “I’m going to miss you. A lot.”
Car in park, she reaches over to give me a swift hug. “You have so many friends, Taylor. You won’t even know that I’m gone.”
At home, after tucking the girls into bed and comforting Tori, who starts crying for Daddy, I sit at my computer and type a quick e-mail.
Nathan, just found out Patti and Don are moving. They leave before December. I can’t stand it. And I can’t bear to think about chairing the auction on my own. Help! What do I do?
I’m about to push send when I read it again and think about our financial crisis and the bills that just keep coming in.
PS. More and more collection agencies are coming at us now. I know what’s in our checking account. There’s no way to pay next month’s bills. We need to talk.
Once again I reread the e-mail, and as I read my eyes start to burn. I don’t want to e-mail Nathan. I want to talk to him. I need to see him. I need our lives normal again.
PPS. The girls miss you. It’s not the same without you.
I push send.
It’s Saturday, and I’ve woken early again. There’s no reason to get up before six on a weekend, but I didn’t sleep well last night, and starting around four I’d wake up every half hour, look at the clock, and then force myself to go back to sleep. Finally at five-forty I got up and came downstairs to make coffee and have a look at the Saturday job ads. Only the morning paper isn’t here yet, and it’s wet out.
Please God don’t let it be another long, wet winter. I can handle the Pacific Northwest as long as we avoid record-breaking rainfall.
At seven-thirty I dart outside to check for the paper. The rain has let up slightly, and I find the paper wrapped in bright blue plastic in the middle of a puddle on the driveway. I shake the plastic and, once inside, carefully peel the wet plastic from the paper.
After reading the headlines and the front section, I glance briefly through “Arts & Entertainment” before going to the classifieds, looking for anything related to PR, communications, and event planning. I see two possibilities and circle those. Just to be thorough, I go through all the sales positions as well, but nothing jumps at me. I’m still poring over the ads when the kitchen phone rings. It’s Nathan. He must have gotten the e-mail I sent last night.
“Hi. Good morning,” I say, picking up the phone and sitting on one of the wrought-iron bar stools. There are three stools, but we rarely use them. They looked pretty in the catalog, cost a fortune, and are ridiculously uncomfortable. “You got my e-mail?”
“Don and Patti are really moving?”
I get an immediate lump in my throat. “Yes. I guess Don starts work the first of November, then Patti and the kids move around Thanksgiving.”
“Wow.”
We’re both low and blue, I can feel it. “So how did that appointment go on Thursday?”
“Fine.”
But it doesn’t sound fine. He doesn’t sound fine. “You like the job, though?”
“It’s good to be working again.”
His cryptic answers do little to ease my sense of alienation. “When do you think you’ll be able to come home?”
“I don’t know. I’m working the entire weekend. It’s a new industry for me, and I’m playing a lot of catch-up. Plus the company has some internal issues, and until those get resolved it’s going to be hard to move forward.” He pauses. “Can I talk to the girls?”
“They’re still sleeping.”
“They have games today?”
“Jemma at nine, Brooke at eleven. I don’t know if you saw the e-mail I forwarded to you, the one from Brooke’s coach. He says she’s a natural. He loves her aggressiveness close to the goal.”
“She’s always been feisty.”
“You can say that again.”
“What about Jemma?”
“She’s doing okay.”
“Just okay?”
This is the longest conversation we’ve had in weeks. It’s weird to think we don’t talk anymore. “Mrs. Osborne is in weekly communication with me regarding her attitude.”
“Is she being rude?”
“No.” I slide off the stool and, with the phone tucked between shoulder and chin, warm up my coffee. “Her teacher would just like to see her make a bigger effort. Apparently she’s underachieving.”
Nathan sighs. “This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this from a teacher.”
“No.”
He’s silent and I hold my cup in my hands, aware of all the things not being said, aware of the distance between us.
“Nathan, we got some nasty notes in the mail this week. Collection agencies are now coming after us.”
“Just put them in the mail to me,” he says wearily.
“I’ve cut Annika back from thirty hours a week to seventeen. Imelda will only clean for us twice a month, and the gardeners are down to once a month.” I wait for him to say something. He doesn’t.
“I’m looking for a job,” I add.
“Getting a job isn’t going to change anything. You won’t make enough money to help with the debt, and you’ll just end up hiring more help so you can cope with the job demands.”
“That’s not true. I’ll work in the morning after Tori’s been dropped off and stop when it’s time to pick her up.”
“You’ll work from nine forty-five till two.”
“Yes.”
He makes a rough sound. I can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a groan. “And who will hire you to work just four hours a day? McDonald’s?”
“Nathan.”
“Seriously, Taylor, what company will hire you to work a four-hour day?”
I scramble, try to think of a good answer, but nothing comes to me. “Fine, I’ll work more hours. Annika can pick the kids up from school. I’ll work ten till five. That’s seven hours. I can do a lot in seven hours.”
His voice drops. “What about your auction?”
“I’ll do it in the evening.”
“What about the girls?”
I nearly scream. “I’ll find a way. I’ll make it work. They’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”
He doesn’t answer for a long time. Then he takes a breath, a deep, slow breath. “Taylor, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, I’m really not, but I don’t think you realize that we pay Annika more an hour than you would earn an hour.”
“That’s not true—”
“When you worked in PR, you were making what? Forty-four thousand? Forty-eight?”
“About that,” I agree stiffly. “But that was ten years ago. Surely with inflation I’d be making more.”
“Not for part-time work, and once you’re hit by taxes, there won’t be a lot left to bring home.”
“So what are you saying? For me to do nothing?”
“Maybe we need to sell the house.”
My heart falls, a sickening plummet down. I lean heavily on the counter. “Sell the house?”
“We’d use the equity that’s left to pay off the bills. We probably wouldn’t be able to buy another house right away, but in a year or two, we could find something comfortable.”
He’s talking, but I’m not listening. Every bone in my body, every fiber of my being, is protesting. I can’t sell the house. I love this house. I love living here. “There has to be another way.”
“Taylor—”
“I’m going to get a job. I will. This week. And it’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”
Sunday night, the girls watch a Disney movie while I take a long bath.
I don’t know that I’m depressed. I just know I can’t get out of the bathtub. I’ve been here for the past half hour, floating in the dark, periodically topping off with more hot water.
Here in the dark I feel safe. Free.
Here in the dark I can almost pretend that everything will be fine.
We can’t really lose the house. That can’t be possible. Nathan’s just trying to scare me. Trying to make me realize we’re in trouble, like that program
Scared Straight
where they show troubled kids just what prison is really like.
Maybe that’s what’s happening here. Maybe I’m being scared straight. Maybe once the program ends I’ll find out that everything is as it should be.
I’m still Taylor Young, wife of handsome, successful Nathan Young and mother of three adorable children living in a big beautiful shingle-style house on the lake, a house I designed myself. A house I love so much that it’s become part of me.
Monday morning, I schedule an appointment with Maddox, one of Seattle’s premier employment agencies. I know they’re premier only because they said so in the phone book, and when I researched them on the Internet, they did come up with some high marks.
I’m meeting with one of their human resources specialists at the company’s Eastside location in downtown Bellevue. I call and get directions. The office is located in one of the Bellevue Place Towers near Lincoln Square.
I wear a black pantsuit with a crisp lavender collared blouse. I carry a purse that could pass for a briefcase and wear black heels. With my hair pulled back in a low ponytail, I look serious. Successful. I look as though I can do just about anything.
The Maddox personnel specialist didn’t see it that way. “Not to be blunt, but you’re a dinosaur, Mrs. Taylor,” she says, dropping my résumé and leaning back in her ergonomically correct chair. “You’re virtually unemployable.”
“How is that possible? I have worked. I have excellent experience—”
“A decade ago.” She sighs. “Mrs. Taylor, you’re competing with men and women who have just recently graduated from school. They’re hungry, they’re smart, they’re ambitious, they’re aggressive. They don’t have spouses, they don’t have children, they don’t have anything competing for their time or attention, and that’s who employers want to hire. Smart, cheap, and available young people.”
I feel myself flush once and again. “You make me sound old. Decrepit. But I’m thirty-six—”
“And you have what, two kids?”
“Three.”
“I take it you’ve stayed home with them these past ten years.”
“Yes.”
“But now it’s time to go back to work?”
I’m shriveling up on the inside, and I don’t know why. “Yes.”
“What do you have to offer my clients?”
“A good brain. Wisdom. Patience.”
The young woman sitting across the desk from me smiles. “How are your computer skills?”
“Good. I can use Excel and Word.”
“How are you with PowerPoint?”
“I’m learning.” I’m fudging the truth a bit. I’m not actively learning, but I did help a little with a PowerPoint presentation for last year’s auction.
“You’d be available to work forty-, fifty-, sixty-hour weeks? Weekends, evenings . . . ?”
I sit taller. “I
know
there are companies interested in part-time employees. I
know
companies job-share.”
“In the big cities, for employees returning from maternity leave.” She folds her hands, looks at me. “I’ll be honest. I could probably get you a job, but it wouldn’t be part-time. It’d be full-time and you’re not going to start at fifty thousand a year. You’d be lucky to make thirty.”
“For full-time.”
She nods. “You’ve been out ten years. There’s a penalty for dropping out that long.”
“Are men penalized that much?”
“You can’t compare the two.”
I look at her hard, finding it difficult to process everything she’s saying. “I can’t believe my prospects are that grim.”
My Maddox employment specialist reluctantly smiles. “It’s not all bad. It could be worse. If you were fifty-five or above, I’d have to tell you your chances for getting a white-collar job would be next to nil. Companies just don’t want to hire ‘old.’”
“But many ‘older’ employees are more experienced.”
“Experience doesn’t always excite companies as much as potential. And youth. You know in America, we worship youth.”
A week has passed since my interview. On my own, I send out a few more résumés and cover letters, hoping that someone, somewhere, will give me a chance. Every day I check my phone and e-mail to see if I’ve gotten a response on any of the positions I applied for. I did get a form rejection in the mail last week from one, and an e-mail “no, thank you” from another as well, but the other companies haven’t even bothered to respond. At least not yet.
The good news is that Nathan’s finally coming home, even if it’s a super-short trip for the weekend before Halloween. He’s promised to take the girls to pick out Halloween costumes and carve pumpkins.
We drive to the airport Friday evening to pick him up, and I’m stunned by his appearance as he climbs into the car on the passenger side. He’s thin and pale, with hollows and shadows beneath his eyes. “Hey, long time no see,” I say lightly, leaning over to kiss him hello.
He gives me a small kiss. “It has been a while.”
The kids all talk at once as I drive us home. Since it’s Friday night, not Saturday or Sunday, there’s no football game traffic to slow us down. Nathan yawns several times during the drive, and I catch him rubbing his eyes once, hard. He definitely hasn’t been living the high life in Omaha, I think, merging onto 520 off 405 and moving into the carpool lane.
As we pull up to the garage, we crunch over piles of fallen red and brown leaves. Nathan frowns. “The gardeners aren’t raking?”
I hit the automatic garage door opener. “They did. But it’s been a couple weeks. They’ll be back next week, though, and they’ll get these then.”
I can see Nathan giving the interior of the house a hard look. I’m suddenly glad I spent the afternoon cleaning. I made the girls help me. Jemma complained bitterly, but Brooke and Tori seemed to actually find it fun.
“Things look nice,” Nathan admits rather reluctantly, sitting on the couch only to be smothered by the girls, who dive all over him for hugs.
“We’re trying,” I answer, sitting in the leather chair across from the couch. I watch the girls wrestle with him. Nathan’s tickling them and throwing them this way and that. For a moment I imagine everything’s fine, everything’s the way it’s always been, but twenty minutes later Nathan pleads exhaustion.
“I’m beat, girls. I have to turn in, but we’ll have the whole day to play tomorrow.”
Brooke stops wriggling to look up into his face. “When are you going back?”
“Sunday.”
“Sunday?” the girls all chorus loudly.
“But that’s the day after tomorrow!” Jemma protests.
“You just got home!” Brooke adds.
Tori’s in tears, and she flings herself around Nathan’s neck and squeezes tight. “Don’t go. Stay here. We need you here. Right, Mom?”
“Right,” I answer, but Nathan’s kissing Tori and doesn’t seem to hear.
Nathan sleeps on the couch in the family room. He says it’s because he doesn’t sleep well anymore and he doesn’t want to keep me up, but I feel utterly rejected as he leaves the room with his pillow and the plump satin quilt from the foot of the bed.
“Then take our room,” I say, jumping from the bed and meeting him in the hall. “You’re staying in some corporate motel. I’m sure the bed there can’t be very comfortable. You deserve a good night’s sleep.”
He gives his head a shake. “I’m not going to kick you out of bed. I’m fine on the couch. Trust me.”
“Nathan—”
“Do you know this is why I haven’t come home? It’s because I can’t do this. I can’t fight with you. It wears me out.”
I look at him, hands clasped together even as I battle to stay calm. “But I don’t want to fight with you, either. I just want you happy.”
He suddenly leans down and kisses my forehead just above my left eyebrow. “I’m happy to be home. All I want to do is sleep. Okay?”