“Fine,” I said. “That’s all I wanted in the first place.”
“Okay. When Rachel came here to visit me, she told me that she… that she had feelings for Dex.”
“I knew it!” I said, pointing at him.
“Are you going to listen or not?”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
“And she had been having those feelings for some time, but not that long a time.”
“How long?”
“A few weeks… maybe a few months.”
“A few
months
?” I shouted.
He gave me a look of warning, as if he were poised to exit the conversation. Sorry. Go on.
“I don’t have much else to say.”
“When did they first hook up?” I asked, petrified of the answer, but needing to know just how big a fool I had been.
He paused and then said that he didn’t know.
“I can tell you’re lying,” I said. “I know you know!”
“What I do know is this,” Ethan said, dodging the question. “Rachel didn’t want to feel the way she did. She was in agony over the whole thing. She had every intention of going back to New York after her visit here and being your maid of honor. She was prepared to move on, force herself to get over Dex, and be your friend. Which is more than most people would do in her shoes.”
My heart pounded in my ears. I was fixated on one thing. One fact. “Give me a date, Ethan. When did they first hook up?”
He crossed his arms and exhaled loudly.
“Was it before or after Rachel’s birthday?” I asked. I honestly don’t know what made me pick that date. Perhaps because Rachel’s birthday is in late May, always coinciding with the start of summer. I could have just as easily said Memorial Day. But I didn’t. I said, “Rachel’s birthday,” and by the look on Ethan’s face, I knew I had hit the jackpot. My mind raced back to the night, how I had thrown a surprise party for her. Suddenly, I remembered with horror how Dex hadn’t come home until nearly seven in the morning. How he had said he was with Marcus. And how Marcus had backed him up. They had
all
lied to me! My fiance had spent the night with my best friend! Months before I had ever cheated on him!
Suddenly everything came into sharp focus: Dexter’s later-than-usual nights working, how Rachel had dragged her feet during my wedding plans, and the July Fourth weekend! My God, Rachel and Dex had both stayed home from the Hamptons! They had been together that entire weekend! It was too horrible to be true, but I was certain that it was true.
I laid it all out for Ethan who didn’t deny a thing. He just looked at me, without a trace of compassion or remorse.
“How could you, Ethan? How could you?” I sobbed.
“How could I what?”
“How could you be friends with her? How could you take me out with those people who knew the whole story? You made me look like a fool! All of you were probably laughing behind my back!”
“Nobody was laughing behind your back.”
“Yeah, right. That mad cow laughed up a storm.”
“Phoebe was a bit rude. I’ll admit that.”
“And admit the rest! Admit that Rachel told all of you what she was doing to me.”
He hesitated and then said, “Her relationship with Dex
did
come up. But obviously I didn’t think you’d ever meet Martin and Phoebe. And besides, we weren’t discussing the situation in a ‘ha ha what a fool Darcy is’ kind of way. It was more of a ‘gosh, how bad it sucks to have feelings for your best friend’s fiance’ sort of way.”
”
Right
. She
really
suffered.”
“Well, didn’t you suffer when you started seeing Marcus? While you were still with Dex?”
“It’s not the same thing, Ethan.”
How was it that everyone had such difficulty grasping the obvious difference between cheating on one’s fiance and screwing over your very best girlfriend?
“This isn’t about me and Dex. It’s about me and Rachel. And I would never have done that to her,” I continued, feeling shocked that my mousy friend had it in her.
He looked at me, folded his arms, and cocked his head with a knowing smile. “
Really
?”
“Never,” I said, taking mental inventory of Rachel’s utterly unappealing ex-boyfriends. Her law school boyfriend and most significant ex, Nate, had a unibrow, sloping shoulders, and an effeminate voice.
“If you say so,” Ethan said skeptically.
“What is that supposed to mean? I have never,
ever
tried to steal one of Rachel’s boyfriends.”
He smiled an oblique, private smile. I knew what he was driving at: I had hooked up with Marcus even though Rachel was interested in him.
“Oh, give me a freaking break, Ethan. Marcus was
not
Rachel’s boyfriend! They had kissed, like, one time. It was never going to go anywhere.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Marcus.”
“So then what
were
you thinking of?”
“Well… I just think that you would do the same thing to Rachel if the circumstances presented themselves. If you had fallen in love with one of her boyfriends, nothing would have stopped you from going after him. Not Rachel’s feelings, not the stigma of taking your best friend’s man. Nothing.”
“No,” I said firmly. “That’s not true.”
Ethan continued. He was on a roll now, leaning forward on the couch, thrusting his index finger at me as he talked. “I think you have a long,
long
history of going after exactly what you want, Darcy. Whatever that is. Come hell or high water. Until now, Rachel has always played second fiddle to you. And you shamelessly let her do the whole lady-in-waiting routine. All through high school she was at your beck and call, letting you show off. You liked it that way. And now that it is all over, you can’t handle it.”
“That’s just… not true!” I sputtered, feeling my face burn. “You’re being so unfair!”
Ethan ignored me and kept going, now pacing in front of his faux fireplace. “You were the star of the show in high school. The star of the show in college. The star of the show in Manhattan. And Rachel let you shine. Now you can’t step back and be happy for her.”
“Be happy for her for
stealing
my fiance? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Darce—
you
did the same thing. It might be a different story if you were deeply in love with Dex, if you hadn’t cheated on him also.”
“But they did it first!”
“That is beside the point,” he said.
“How can you say that?”
“Because. Because, Darcy, you never examine your own behavior. You just look to blame everyone else.”
He then proceeded to bring up this ancient history from high school. Like why I had applied to Notre Dame when I knew that it was Rachel’s dream to go there, and how crushed she was when I got in and she didn’t.
“I didn’t know she owned Notre Dame!”
“It was her dream. Not yours.”
“So let me get this straight, she can go after my fiance, but I don’t have the right to apply to a stupid college?”
He ignored my question and said, “While we’re on this topic, Darcy, why don’t you tell me one thing… Did you
really
get in there?”
“Did I get in where?” I asked.
“Were you or were you not accepted at Notre Dame University?”
“Yes. I was,” I said, almost believing the lie I had told all of my friends so many years ago. Notre Dame had been Rachel’s first choice, but I had applied, too, thinking how great it would be if we could be roommates. I remember getting that rejection letter, feeling like a failure. So I told a harmless fib to my friends, and then covered by saying that I was going to Indiana anyway.
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You did
not get
into Notre Dame.”
I started to sweat. How did he know? Had he seen my letter? Had he hacked into the Notre Dame admissions office’s computer system?
“Why is my choice of colleges relevant here?”
“I’ll tell you why it’s relevant, Darcy. I’ll tell you exactly why. You have always competed with Rachel. From way back in the day until now. Everything has always been a contest with you. And part of what’s eating you up inside is that Dex picked Rachel. He picked her over you.”
I tried to speak but he kept going, his words cruel, stark, and loud. “Dex wanted to be with her and not you. Never mind that you didn’t want to be with him either. Never mind that you cheated on him too. Never mind that clearly you and he weren’t at all right for each other and you both saved yourselves a divorce by calling it quits. You can only focus on one thing: the fact that Rachel somehow beat you. And it kills you, Darce. I’m telling you, as your friend, that you need to let it go and move on,” he finished in his debate-team tone.
I shook my head. I told him that he was wrong. I told him that nobody, nobody in my position, could be happy for Rachel. I felt myself getting shrill, desperate to make him see things my way, just as I had tried to do with Marcus.
“It’s like this, Ethan… even if they hadn’t done a thing behind my back, even if this relationship had begun
after
we broke up, it would still be… just
wrong
. You just don’t go there with a friend’s ex. Period. How is it that men have trouble seeing that? It’s a basic life principle.”
“She
loves
him, Darce.
That
is a basic life principle.”
“Would you stop rubbing it in! I don’t want to hear the word
love
again. Whether they
love
each other is totally beside the point… You don’t understand
anything
about friendship.”
“Darcy. No offense—and I’m not saying this to be mean, because I care about you, which is why you’re here right now for this purported
visit,
” he said, making quotation marks in the air as he said the word
visit.
“But—”
“But
what
?” I asked pitifully, afraid of what he would say next.
“But I think
you’re
the one who doesn’t understand friendship,” he said, speaking fast and furiously. “Not at all. Which is why you’re sitting here essentially friendless. At war with Rachel. At war with Claire. At war with the father of your child. At war with your
own mother,
who, as far as you know, has no clue where you are! And now you’re mad at me too.”
“It’s not my fault that you all betrayed me.”
“You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, Darce. You need to realize that there are consequences to your basically shallow existence.”
“I’m
not
shallow,” I said, only half-believing it.
“You
are
shallow. You’re utterly selfish and misguided, with totally screwed-up values.”
He had gone too far. I might be a bit on the shallow side, but the rest of his accusations were ridiculous. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Misguided?”
“It means that you’re, what, five months pregnant now? And as far as I can tell, you’re doing nothing to prepare for this child. Nothing. You come to London for this so-called visit, but I see no signs of you returning to New York—and meanwhile, you have made no effort to seek any prenatal care here in London. On top of that, you don’t eat particularly well, probably in an effort to stay thin at the expense of your baby’s growth. You had two glasses of wine tonight. And instead of saving for the child you have to raise alone, you are throwing money to the wind on positively frivolous purchases. It’s simply staggering to watch how utterly irresponsible and totally self-absorbed you’re being.”
I sat there, completely speechless. I mean, what do you say when someone tells you, essentially, that you’re a shit friend, a horrible, irresponsible mother-to-be, and an empty, self-absorbed woman? Unless I counted some of the accusations I’d received from scorned lovers (which don’t have much credibility), this was an unprecedented attack. He had said so many mean things, come at me from so many angles, that I was unsure how to defend myself. “I
am
taking prenatal vitamins,” I said meekly.
Ethan looked at me as if to say,
If that’s the best you can do here, I rest my case
. Then he announced that he was going to bed. His expression told me not to follow him, that he did not want me in his room.
But just to be sure, after I sat in the living room for a long while, licking my wounds and replaying his speech, I decided to go down the hall and check his door. Not that I would have opened it on a bet—I had some pride—I just had to know whether he had boxed me out for real. Did he regret his harsh words? Had he softened his opinion of me as his beer-buzz dissipated? I put my hand around the glass doorknob and turned. It didn’t budge. Ethan had shut me out. There was something about that door, cold and unyielding, that made me feel angry and sad and determined all at once.
twenty-one
The next morning I awoke on my air mattress and felt my baby kick for the first time. There had been other times when I thought I felt her—only to realize that it was likely just indigestion, hunger pangs, or nerves. But there was no confusing that odd, unmistakable sensation of tiny feet moving inside me, churning up against my organs and bones. I put my hand on the spot, right under my rib cage, waiting to feel her again. Sure enough, there was another small but distinct nudge and twitch. I know it sounds crazy, especially considering that my stomach was quickly becoming the size of a basketball, but I think it took that flutter of baby feet for my pregnancy to move beyond the theoretical and feel real. I had a baby inside me, a little person who was going to be born in a few short months. I was going to be a mother. In a way, I already was.
I curled up in a fetal position and squeezed my eyes shut as I was bombarded by a riot of emotions. First I felt a burst of pure joy. It was an indescribable happiness, a kind that I’d never experienced before, a kind that can’t be found by purchasing a Gucci bag or a pair of Manolo Blahniks. A smile spread across my face, and I almost laughed out loud.
But my happiness quickly commingled with an unsettling melancholy as I realized that I had no one to share my huge milestone with. I couldn’t call my baby’s father or her grandmother. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to Ethan after all the mean things he had said to me. And most important, I couldn’t call Rachel. For the first time since I found Dex in her closet, I really missed her. I still had Annalise, but she just wasn’t the same. I thought of all the times in the past when I’d had good news, bad news, in-between news. How I could barely digest it before I was running next door or speed-dialing Rachel’s number. When we were kids in Indiana, Annalise was always the runner-up, always the afterthought, always the second to know. With Rachel out of the picture, you’d think that Annalise would just replace her. But I was beginning to see that it didn’t work like that. Rachel wasn’t replaceable. Claire hadn’t replaced her. Annalise couldn’t either. I wondered why that was. After all, I knew Annalise would say all the right things, be as nice as she could be. But she would never be able to quench that deep-seated need to share.
As I turned over on my mattress to face the window, I heard Ethan’s words: the part about me being a bad friend, the part about me being selfish and self-centered and shallow. A warm shame spread over me as I acknowledged that there was a ring of truth to his accusations. I looked at the facts: I had no doctor, no income, no close girlfriends, no contact with my family. I was on the verge of depleting all my savings, and all I had to show for myself was a closet full of gorgeous clothing, most of which no longer fit. I had moved to London to find change, but I hadn’t really changed at all. My life was stagnating. I needed to do more. For myself and for my baby.
I stared out my barred window into the dreary London morning, and vowed to make the day I first felt my baby kick a turning point in my life. I would prove to Ethan that I was not the person he had described the evening before. I got to my feet (which was becoming more difficult to do, particularly from a horizontal position on a soft air mattress) and found a pad of paper in the bottom of one of my suitcases. I ripped out a page and wrote: “Steps to Becoming a Better Darcy.” I thought for a second, replaying Ethan’s speech. Then I wrote:
1. Go to an ob-gyn in London and prepare for motherhood!
2. Be more healthy, i.e., eat better, no caffeine or alcohol
3. Find some new girlfriends (no competing with them!)
4. Let my family know that I’m in London and that I’m okay
5. Get a job (preferably a “do-gooding” job)
6. Stop buying clothes (and shoes, etc.) and start saving money!
Then, because something still seemed to be missing, I threw in a catchall:
7. Refine my character (i.e., be more thoughtful, less selfish, etc.)
As I reread my list, I found myself wondering what Ethan would say if he saw it. Would he praise my effort or would he scoff, “Don’t be so naive, Darcy. You can’t just make a list and fix yourself overnight! It doesn’t work like that.”
Why did I care so much about what Ethan thought anyway? Part of me wanted to hate him. Hate him for siding with Rachel. Hate him for lying to me. Hate him for the awful things he had said about me.
But I couldn’t hate him. And in a bizarre, surprising way, all I wanted to do was see him, or at the very least set about changing his opinion of me.
I rocked once to gain momentum before standing again. Then I made my way down the hall to Ethan’s room. Upon discovering that he had already left for the day, I went to the kitchen and whipped up a healthy egg-white omelet. Then I consulted my list and decided to clean his flat. I dusted and vacuumed, scrubbed the toilet, took out the trash, did two loads of laundry in his ridiculously small washer/dryer unit (the Brits have miserable, third-world appliances), carefully stacked his magazines and newspapers, and soaped down the kitchen floors.
After the place was spotless, I wrote my mother a quick note, telling her that I was staying with Ethan in London. “I know we’re not happy with each other right now,” I wrote, “but I still don’t want you and Daddy to worry about me. I’m doing fine.” Then I wrote Ethan’s phone number in a PS just in case she wanted to call me. I sealed and stamped my letter, showered, and headed out in the London drizzle, wandering up Kensington Church Street to Notting Hill. I resisted the urge to stop in a single store, gaining strength from my list, which was folded in neat thirds and tucked into my coat pocket. I even stopped in a charity thrift shop to ask for a job. No positions were available, but I felt proud of myself for trying.
On my way home, I ducked inside a coffee shop for a short rest, ordered a decaffeinated latte, and hunkered down in a big overstuffed armchair. On the couch next to me sat two women—a blonde and a brunette—who looked about my age. The blonde was balancing a baby on one knee as she struggled to eat a brownie with her free hand. Both girls wore tiny diamonds on their left ring fingers, and I recalled that Ethan had mentioned that the Brits are less ostentatious about engagement rings than Americans. Maybe that sort of thing was emblematic of what Ethan liked about London. The Brits’ understated quality was the opposite of what he said I was—more or less a shameless show-off.
From the corner of my eye, I continued to study the women. The blonde had a weak chin but good highlights; the brunette wore gripping velour sweats but was holding an enviable Prada bag. I felt a pang of worry that I was being shallow, but reassured myself that it was okay to be observant; I just shouldn’t draw conclusions about the women as people. I thought of how many times I had judged people by their footwear, and vowed that I would never do so again. After all, wearing a square-toed shoe in a pointy-toed season was not a crime. To prove the point to myself, I resisted looking down at their feet. I could feel myself turning into a more solid person already, and my spirits soared.
As I sipped my coffee and flipped through
Hello
magazine, I listened to the women talk, noting that their conversation sounded much more interesting in their British accents. The theme of their chat was marital woes—both had issues with their husbands. The blonde said that having a baby makes everything worse. The brunette complained that since she and her husband started trying to conceive, sex had become a chore. Every few seconds, I turned the pages of my magazine, which was filled with Hollywood stars, as well as people I had never seen before, presumably British television actors. And more photos of Posh and Becks.
The blonde sighed as she repositioned her squirming baby. “At least you’re having sex,” she said to her friend, as she reached down and pulled a pacifier out of a side pocket in her stroller and popped it into the baby’s mouth. The baby sucked vigorously for several seconds before letting the pacifier drop to the ground. An apparent subscriber to the three-second rule, the blonde picked it up, swiped it across her sleeve, and reinserted it in her child’s mouth.
“How long has it been?” the brunette asked, in a candid way that told me these two were not new or casual acquaintances. It made me ache for Rachel, for the way things used to be.
“I couldn’t even say,” the blonde answered. “Ages.”
The brunette made a sympathetic clucking noise as she wrapped her tea bag around a plastic stirrer and squeezed with her thumb and index finger.
I closed my magazine and made eye contact with the blonde. She smiled at me, giving me an opening.
“She’s really cute,” I said, gazing at her baby and then realizing with panic that the baby could be a boy. It was impossible to tell. Yellow outfit, bald head, no gender-based accoutrement.
“Thank you,” the blonde said.
Good. I guessed right. “What’s her name?”
“Natalie.”
“Hi, Natalie,” I said in a high, singsongy voice. Natalie ignored me, kept straining to grasp her mother’s brownie. “How old is she?”
“Twenty-two weeks.” The blonde smiled as she jiggled her up and down on one knee.
“So… that’s what? Five months?”
She laughed. “Yeah, right. Sorry. I remember before I had Natalie I wondered why mums gave their child’s age in weeks. I guess it’s an extension of the pregnancy.”
I nodded as I noticed the brunette giving me a curious once-over as if to say, “What is your deal, American girl, sitting here alone on a weekday?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m eighteen weeks along myself—”
“Pregnant?” both women squealed at once as if I had just told them that I was dating Prince William. It felt great to finally have a little enthusiasm over my news.
“Yes,” I said, moving aside my coat and rubbing my stomach with my ringless left hand. “In fact, I just felt a kick for the first time this morning.”
It struck me as a bit sad that I was first sharing such monumental news with strangers, but I told myself that they were potential new friends. Perhaps they would even become lifelong, to-the-grave mates.
“Congrats!” the blonde squealed.
“You look amazing for eighteen weeks!” the brunette said.
I smiled with what felt like sincere modesty. “Thank you.”
“Boy or girl?” the brunette asked.
“I don’t know yet for sure, but I’m fairly certain that it’s a girl.”
“I was too,” the blonde said, rubbing Natalie’s fuzzy head. “I just knew she was a girl.”
“Did you find out ahead of time?”
“No, I wanted to be surprised,” she said. “My husband knew, though.”
I raised my eyebrows. “He knew and you didn’t?”
She nodded. “Our doctor showed him the relevant anatomy on the sonogram while I closed my eyes. My husband swore that he wouldn’t tell another soul. Not even our mums, who were positively dying to know.”
“I can’t believe he kept it a secret! That’s amazing,” I said.
“Her husband is great that way,” the brunette said.
“Hmm.” The blonde nodded. I had begun to notice that the Brits make that
hmm
sound often, in lieu of saying
yes
or
uh-huh
or
yeah
. She continued, “Never one slip with the pronouns. He was always very careful to say ‘he or she’ or just ‘the baby.’ “
“What about baby names? Wasn’t it obvious when you’d discuss names?”
“Not at all. He covered both equally… In fact, he pushed Gavin so hard that if anything, I thought we were having a boy.”
“Wow. Your husband sounds like a great guy,” I said.
She turned to look at her friend and they both burst into laughter. “We were just tearing him to shreds. He’s being a bit of a prat these days.”
I wasn’t sure what
a prat was
, but I nodded empathetically and said, “I know how that is!”
A few seconds of silence passed and I could tell that the girls were again wondering about my situation.
“I’m Darcy, by the way,” I said, with what I hoped was a disarming, “I won’t compete with you” smile.
“I’m Charlotte,” the blonde said.
“And I’m Meg,” the brunette said.
“It’s so great to meet you both. I’ve been dying to have some female interaction since moving here,” I said. It was the truth, although I don’t think I consciously realized it until that moment.
“When did you move to London?” Meg asked.
“About a month ago.”
“Did you move here alone?” she asked. It was as close as she could come to inquiring about the father of my child.
“Yes, I’m going it alone,” I said.
Meg and Charlotte both stared at me, with what I detected as admiration. I gave them a warm, open smile, tacit permission to inquire further, which they did, tentatively. I answered each of their questions, only embellishing occasionally. For example, I told them that I caught Rachel in bed with Dex—and I left out Marcus altogether, thereby implying that Dex was the father. It just seemed easier that way, and frankly, what was the difference at this point? Both men were out of the picture. My audience of two was riveted. Charlotte even ignored Natalie, who was gumming the corner of an
Evening Standard.
I continued my tale, telling them I had quit my job, and come to London to live with my childhood friend Ethan. “He’s straight, but we’re just friends,” I told them. A gay friend might be more interesting, and certainly more entertaining, but there was something compelling about an aboveboard, straight male—female friendship. Besides, it gave me more credibility as a nice girl. I could hear them saying later, “She’s beautiful, but she doesn’t go around stalking every available man.”
Charlotte asked if I had any interest in Ethan. I shook my head vigorously. “Absolutely not… We’re strictly friends. Although we did go out in the fifth grade!”
They laughed.
“So I’m entirely single… if you know anyone?” I said, fleetingly worrying that finding a man shouldn’t be important to me. I dismissed the concern; a boyfriend needn’t detract from my other, loftier goals.
Meg and Charlotte exchanged a thoughtful glance as if doing a mental inventory of all their male acquaintances.