Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel (24 page)

“Don’t you want to talk for a second?” I ask.

He laughs. “No.”

We make love and it’s hurried, rushed, and completely unsatisfying. I tell myself that it will be better once he’s settled in, once we’ve gotten back to normal with each other. I pull the flat sheet up around my shoulders and tell myself to stop thinking about Nate. To stop comparing Jaime to him. Jaime looks at me, and I feel guilty that I’m thinking of another man while I’m in bed with him. Maybe Nate is right. Maybe I just don’t do nice.

“Wanna play a quick round of tennis before dinner?” I ask Jaime. He’s already back up, unpacking his duffel, naked, while I’m still lying in bed. “We could run over to Hunter’s place for a quick game.”

“Tennis?” he asks, laughing. “You know sports aren’t really my thing. And anyway, I didn’t get a chance to go uptown and grab your sneakers.”

It was the only thing I’d asked him to do (unless, of course, you count calling off the attempted murder investigation, which I don’t), and I’m slightly disappointed that he didn’t make a point of doing it.

“No problem,” I say, and try to smile. He regards me for a moment—clearly he can tell that it actually is a problem that he didn’t do the one thing I’d asked, the one thing he’d agreed to do—but then opts to just let the moment pass and ignore it.

“So, what time did your grandmother say dinner was?”

“We eat at seven,” I say, and look over at the clock. It’s not even five o’clock yet.

“What should we do?” Jaime asks, with a look in his eye that suggests what he wants to do.

“Let’s go have drinks,” I say, and pop out of bed. I ignore the fact that Jaime was clearly suggesting sex again. I ignore the fact that I’m pregnant, and can’t actually have a drink. I ignore the fact that I can’t stop comparing Jaime to Nate. I ignore all of this, and instead get up and get dressed for drinks.

I try to suggest to Jaime that he wear a pair of jeans that isn’t ripped, but it turns out that he’s only brought the one pair. The one other pair of pants he packed are a pair of army green cargo pants, so I have him throw those on, along with a white button-down shirt that was lurking toward the bottom of his duffel. Judging from the wrinkles, it’s not clear to me whether he packed the shirt for this trip, or if it was just left in the duffel from some other trip, and then never unpacked. But it doesn’t matter. A wrinkled white button-down is still better than the rest of the options: unwashed concert tees.

We walk out to the patio, and it seems that cocktail hour has already started. My mother’s substituted her usual cup of tea for a glass of sparkling rosé, and she’s sitting with my grandmother and Adan, who are munching on homemade guacamole and chips. My grandmother makes the introductions between Jaime and Adan while my mother refreshes her glass of wine.

Gray has always been a big fan of Jaime’s. True, she’s only met him a handful of times, but I know that she loves the fact that he is an artist. I think she secretly hopes that some of his talent will rub off on me. But I’ve never really been artistically inclined. The closest I’ve ever gotten to a creative endeavor is my recent organization of my grandmother’s trunk of photographs.

“How’s the music going?” my mother asks Jaime, once we’ve all settled into our chairs. Jaime’s sitting next to my mother, looking out at the ocean, and I’m next to Adan, facing the house.

“Great,” Jaime says. “Just great. In fact, we’ve booked a gig out here for Friday.”

I’m about to ask Jaime what he’s talking about when my grandmother’s chef comes outside with a glass of decaffeinated iced tea for me, and the table gets into a heated conversation about whether or not I can still put Sweet’n Low in my tea, given my condition. The consensus is that Splenda might be acceptable, but that plain old sugar is probably best.

By the time the debate over artificial sweeteners is done, I’ve almost forgotten that Jaime’s casually mentioned that he’s booked a gig.

But my grandmother has not.

“So, what sort of gig is this?” my grandmother asks. The way she says “gig” with her slight French lilt is nothing short of hilarious. If I wasn’t seething at the thought that Jaime already booked work for the third night he’ll be out here, I probably would have laughed. My grandmother is smiling, but I see in her eyes that she, too, is disappointed that Jaime’s head is not completely with me and the fact that we are having a baby together, that he’s already moved on to thinking about other things.

“There’s a rock club over in Quogue. Do you know it?” he asks my grandmother, smirking.

My grandmother smiles back sweetly in response. It is a smile that says: “I know that you are trying to make fun of me, but I will have the last laugh. I always do.”

Jaime has never really gotten my grandmother. I thought that spending more time with her would make him fall in love with her, the way that everyone else does, but he is seemingly immune to her charms.

“Well,” he continues. “It’s on Friday night, ten o’clock. My guys are going to drive out for the night. We’ll play the gig and then they’ll head back to the city.”

“Nonsense,” my grandmother says. “We have a perfectly good guest house right here. Why don’t you have them stay out with us for the weekend?”

“Wow,” he says. “That’s really generous. I don’t know if I can accept.” He looks at me, and I nod.

“Of course you can,” I say, and take a sip of my iced tea. I know what my grandmother is doing here: she is giving me enough rope to hang myself.

“Thank you,” he says. I’m not sure if Jaime’s saying this to me or to my grandmother, but she answers, saying that it’s nothing. Nothing at all.

Forty

The guest house already smells like boy. Dirty clothes are strewn everywhere, and music is blaring from the living room speakers. I don’t know if they’ve found beer somewhere in the guest house or they brought beer with them, but open cans are everywhere. Quite a feat, considering they’ve been out here less than an hour. These guys move quickly.

“So, my grandmother’s throwing a little cocktail party for you tomorrow night,” I tell Jaime. “Your friends are more than welcome to stay the weekend and come.”

My grandmother insisted on throwing a small Saturday-night cocktail party to celebrate Jaime’s arrival. I didn’t want her to do this, but I really couldn’t say no. I can never say no to my grandmother.

There are no tents this time, but there is a caterer. And a party planner, who is flitting around the house nervously, trying, in just the seventy-two hours she’s been given, to put together a cocktail party that will live up to my grandmother’s exacting standards. I almost walked into her on my way out to the guest house, since I couldn’t help but look up at Nate’s room. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting—for him to be up there, staring down?—but I couldn’t stop myself from looking up every three seconds, like a nervous tick.

“Sounds great,” Jaime says. “I’m sure the guys would love to stay for a party.”

“Good,” I say. “My grandmother’s parties are always a lot of fun.”

“Fun is good,” he says, and leans in to kiss me. I kiss him back, and before I know it we are kissing, really kissing, and I remember what it’s like to be with him. Not the way we’ve been together these last few days—stilted and unfamiliar—but the way we used to be. Jaime puts his arms around me and lets his right hand meander down my back. He pushes against my lower back and I fall into him. Pressed up against him, I take it all in—his lips, his smell, the way the stubble on his face always rubs against mine, leaving my skin raw.

“Whoa, man, sorry to interrupt,” Johnny, the drummer, says, coming down the stairs. “I can come back if you want.”

“No, it’s cool,” Jaime says, pecking me on the lips. Turning to me, he says: “Babe, give us some time to warm up a bit. I’ll see you later.” We kiss again and I spin on my heel and head toward the door. He pats me on my butt as I walk out and it makes me giggle.

I make my way across the pool area, on my way to the main house, and I just can’t resist—I look up at Nate’s window again. I expect that I’ll see the same thing I’ve seen each of the other 432 times I’ve looked up there today, but this time it’s different. This time, Nate’s standing at his window, looking down at me, refusing to turn away.

*   *   *

Jaime’s up on the stage, doing a sound check. When I see him onstage with his band, I get a rush of excitement. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him perform. After a while, there are just so many gigs that you can’t go to all of them, so I ended up going to none of them.

The bar is packed with summer-share kids, some of whom came here straight from the train station. You can tell by the bags they are carrying, the work clothes they are still wearing. I managed to get a spot at the bar for my mother and myself by pulling the I’m-pregnant-and-she’s-got-cancer card, and we’ve actually got a pretty decent view of the stage.

My grandmother is nestled in at a tiny table for two in a corner of the club with Adan. She’s wearing jeans and an old Beatles concert tee, paired with leopard stilettos with four-inch heels. I love that she’s made such an effort to fit in here. She made a special shopping trip just to look, as she put it, “rocker chic.” The jeans are from Georges Mandel (and yes, you pay extra for all of the carefully placed rips), and she picked up the concert tee from a boutique in town (pre-aged and studded with tiny little rhinestones). Normally, she wouldn’t venture west of Southampton—Southamptonites never set foot in Westhampton or Quogue; they only ever drive west to get back to Manhattan.

When Adan saw her, he told her that she looked like a teenager. Even though that’s not really how my grandmother dressed when she actually was a teenager, which he would know. And I’ve got the photos to prove it. Still, I can’t help but think it’s adorable that in Adan’s eyes, my grandmother is only sixteen years old.

It’s ten-thirty already and Jaime’s band still has not gone on. He jumps off the stage and walks over to my mom and me.

“You two all set over here?” he asks, running his hands through my hair.

“We’re good,” I say.

“We’re excited for the show,” my mother says. “Do you want a drink?”

“I’ve got a beer with me up on stage,” Jaime says. “Give me a kiss for luck.”

I oblige, and then Jaime turns and hops back onto the stage.

“So, do you think you can handle raising a child with someone who’s out every night?” my mother asks me casually.

“He’s not out every night,” I say, but then when I think about it, I realize that he is out most nights of the week. Something that didn’t make much of a difference when I was working as a lawyer, stuck at the office until nine at night.

“Even so,” she says, “do you think you can be with someone who works at night?”

“I thought you loved Jaime,” I say.

“I do,” she says, taking a sip of her drink. “I think Jaime is wonderful and talented and a very good guy.”

“So, then what’s the problem?” I ask, annoyed at this whole line of questioning, annoyed that there is a line of questioning. She shrugs. “Just because someone’s great doesn’t necessarily mean they’re great for you.”

I don’t answer. Instead, I swivel around in my seat so I can have a better view for when the band begins playing, but my mother isn’t done yet.

“Why didn’t you make partner?” she asks. She is practically screaming in my ear, the noise level of the club getting louder and louder.

“They went with someone else,” I say, back still turned to her, and take a sip of my water.

“But when you were a fifth year, they’d told you that you were on partnership track,” she says. I’m surprised that she’s remembered this. I wasn’t aware that she’d been following my career so closely. I’d always thought that since she had such disdain for lawyers, she didn’t really care much about how I was doing at my firm. “And then, when you had your reviews, every other year after that, they told you the same thing, didn’t they? So, when did you get off course?”

I swivel my chair back to face my mother. “Well, they didn’t exactly tell me that I was on course every year after that. Adam died, and there was a lot I was dealing with.”

“So they didn’t make you partner because you were grieving?” she asks. “Why didn’t you just take more bereavement leave? Can’t you sue them for that?”

“Well, it wasn’t just that,” I say, stirring my drink slowly. “I got interested in other things.”

“That’s great,” she says. “I had no idea you were interested in anything but law. What other things were you doing?”

“Um,” I say. I’m not accustomed to speaking to my mother about my career. “I just got really involved with pro bono work.”

“You mean you were working for free?”

“Yes,” I say, “but through the firm. So the firm was fully aware of what I was doing. And it looked really good for the firm to be logging so many pro bono hours.”

“Well, that’s great, Hannah. What kind of work?”

“Oh,” I say, “it started with a few social security cases. Trying to help people get their benefits and stuff.”

“That sounds great,” my mother says. “And I’m sure that it does look really good for the firm to do a few cases like that each year. Sort of offsets all the work they do for those evil uber-corporations.”

“Well, it was more than just a few cases,” I say. “I would do anything I could get my hands on. After a while, it gets really contagious. Trying to help people, I mean. Making a difference.”

“How many hours were you billing, exactly?”

“I started off slowly, but then it sort of took on a life of its own. I guess when I started, it was only an hour or two a week. Then it became a quarter of my yearly billables, and then half, and then last year I ended up not taking on any client cases at all.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, leaning closer to me to hear the answer. She may not know much about the practice of law, but she certainly understood what I was trying to tell her.

“I only did pro bono work.” I look ahead at the bar, and stir the lemon into my iced water.

“Did the firm know?” she asks. “Are you allowed to do that?”

“Obviously not,” I say, laughing a bit to break the tension.