All the Difference (13 page)

The sun was setting that following Monday, casting a sharp red-tinged glare on Molly's office window. She'd spent the entire weekend holed up in the guest quarters of Scott's parents' home, eating caviar for brunch instead of catching up on work as she'd intended to do. Even as long as she'd been dating Scott, the lifestyle in which he'd grown up still stunned her. She was used to casual Sundays at home, with her dad standing over the stove in his slippers, a coffee mug in one hand while he cooked up scrapple and scrambled eggs to eat before they rushed off to church. At Monica and Edward's house—the Manor, as Molly thought of it—a cook prepared omelets to order when they came together for a lazy, late-morning meal. There were bowls of fresh fruit and yogurt parfaits and French-pressed coffee. At Molly's childhood home, the family wore pajamas to the table and traded sections of the Sunday paper. At Scott's, one was expected to change clothes before eating and remember which fork to use. It was a whole other world, and everything in it sparkled.

Molly had been working double-time today to make up for the lost hours over the weekend, Bill's warning still reverberating in her head. The last beam of sunlight disappeared behind City Hall as Molly closed her laptop and stretched her neck. She was surprised at how many of her clients had no idea how to navigate social media, and she had spent the afternoon creating pages for two of them on various sites. She could be just as focused as her
father and just as thorough as her mother. She rolled through the websites now on her phone to assess the positive feedback they'd already received. She decided that she had just enough time to send one more email to Bill before meeting Jenny for dinner. Her eyes felt like they could close any moment, and her back ached. She looked down to see that her feet were swelling a little over her shoes, making the thin heels look like a set of doll's slippers that had been forced on under her heavy ankles. Molly was soon going to have to figure out how to make Target flip-flops work with her new Topshop maternity dresses. She wondered how it would feel to waddle down the halls of S&G to meet a client in a few months. She fished the last chocolate-covered mint out of the bag on her desk and chewed the candy without really tasting it. The company was going to have to lay somebody else off just to afford to expense her business dinners.

Molly felt her stomach rumble at the thought of food. She looked out at the floodlights popping on below the statue of William Penn on his perch above City Hall, illuminating his regal stare over the city, his aloof stance high above the rush of traffic still trickling out through the clogged streets. She thought of Scott, probably home by now, and the empty room on the second floor of the house that would be the nursery. This time next year, a baby would be sleeping in that room.

Molly looked around her office, which was filled with the imprint of her personality: a potted fern kept clipped of all browned leaves, framed diplomas hanging on the wall next to a Sixers pendant, and a vintage, autographed photograph of Lena Horne. She had bookshelves filled with reference binders, photographs of Scott and her nieces, a stuffed doll of UPenn's mascot—the Quaker—all arranged with care and dusted at the end of each
week. There were duplicate chargers for her phone and tablet and computer, a drawer filled with individually wrapped chocolate squares and instant-coffee packets, a spare pair of heels under the desk, and an extra coat hanging from a single hook on the back of the door. This room was as much a part of her as her bedroom at home. Molly stood to close the blinds on her window and gathered her files. She slid them into her leather bag, grabbed her phone and her coat, and shut her office door behind her.

Molly was on time to join Jenny at Pattaya, their favorite Thai restaurant in University City. It was a small place, and warm, patronized by college students and aging professors. The women had discovered the casual eatery one night after a seeing an awful independent film at the now-closed Bridge theater. It had quickly become their favorite destination, mainly because it was one of the few quiet places in the city where they could catch up without running into somebody one of them knew. Philadelphia, as big as it was, was a lot like any town: live there long enough, and one day you realize that you recognize at least one person wherever you go. Most of the time Molly found comfort in the predictability. But some days, like those when she was halfway through a pregnancy, with skin that'd exploded like a teenager's and a new tendency to burp without warning, she was just as okay being anonymous.

“Hey!” Molly waved to Jenny, who was at the bar and halfway through a tall glass of what Molly recognized as a Tamarind Dream. To Molly, it might as well have had a red flag in it rather than an umbrella. Jenny hitting the hard stuff this often was like seeing snow fall in Texas in June. It meant something was going very, very wrong in her world.

“Ah, bar stool, blessed bar stool.” Molly sighed when she reached Jenny and sank onto the tall chair beside her. “How I've been waiting for a seat like you.”

Jenny shook her head and laughed at Molly over the rim of her glass. “Baby weighing you down?”

“I'll say. Cramping my style, too.” Molly signaled for the bartender. “Could I have a glass of water with lemon, please? Thanks.”

She turned back to her friend and stared at Jenny's drink. “That looks good. Can I at least smell it?”

“Molly, you don't like stuff like this even when you can drink!” Jenny exclaimed. “They don't make a nonalcoholic whiskey and Coke?”

Molly shook her head. “I think that's just called Coke.”

The bartender slid Molly's water across the bar. Molly looked from her glass to the colorful cocktail in Jenny's.

“So. I take it things aren't going well,” Molly said.

“Not unless you count me going insane at my parents' house,” Jenny said. She took a deep gulp from her drink.

“I thought there had to be a reason you were going for the vodka.”

“Molly, it's been awful,” Jenny said. “I spend my days at that horrendous bank job—seriously, do they really need someone to itemize receipts anymore?—and come home to meatloaf and boxed mashed potatoes on TV trays every night. All my parents do is watch game shows. I think it's the only way they know how to live together, if you really want to know. They don't talk about anything more important than how pretentious Alex Trebek's French accent sounds.” She picked up a napkin and began twisting it with her fingers. “Which it totally does, by the way. I've practically moved into the gym in the evenings just to get out of
there. And get this. When I
am
home they barely talk to me because they're so afraid of acting judgmental about the situation with Dan, but their silence makes it so obvious that they think I should run back to him with open arms.” Jenny paused. “As if they're in any place to give marital advice.” The napkin was now lying in shreds on the bar. Molly looked at her friend, who was pushing the pieces of paper into a single pile. Both with the napkin and with Dan, Jenny had created a mess out of something so trivial, and Molly had to fight the urge to sweep her arm across the counter and clean up the jumble of fragments.

“And what do you think about Dan?” she asked instead.

“I think I'm afraid Dan's a cheating rat bastard, that's what I think.” Jenny took another gulp of her drink, flinching as the liquor went down her throat.

“Been hearing that phrase a lot lately,” Molly mumbled.

“What'd you say?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” Molly took a deep breath and twisted on her stool to face her friend. “But, Jenny, he didn't cheat on you. You know that.”

“No, I don't. How could I? He didn't exactly explain himself at your party,” Jenny said.

Molly groaned. “Jenny, Scott was blabbering all over the place. Dan couldn't have gotten a word in edgewise if he'd stood on a chair and shouted. Have you tried talking to him? I know how you get when you're angry, and you're not exactly the easiest person to communicate with.”

Molly paused. Jenny's expression was impassive.

“No offense.”

“None taken. I know I shut down, I do. But I just keep imagining him talking to this girl, actually going off with her
somewhere dark and doing God knows what. They say you marry your father, you know. I can't get the image out of my head. And then I just get so . . . so
angry
that I hang up the phone when he calls and don't answer his texts,” Jenny said. “I don't want to be made a fool.”

Molly stared down at her water glass, as if the answers to Jenny's problems could be found in the ice cubes. She'd never known Jenny and Dan to not be attached at the hip—they were as good as Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, Fred and Ginger. A person didn't think of one of them without considering the other. Some couples were like that, Molly thought. Most good couples, anyway. Molly glanced down at the ring on her left hand and cleared her throat.

“Listen.”

Jenny looked up from her drink and cocked her head, waiting.

“Have you talked to Scott?”

Jenny's face flushed pink, making her freckles pop like tiny polka dots against her skin. She shook her head. “He left me some crazy-long voice mail. I
may
have deleted it before listening.”

Molly gave her a blank stare. Jenny shrugged.

“I was a little angry.”

“Well, I talked to Scott about that night. He said that he just saw Dan talking to that girl, then walk away for a while—that's it. Remember how obnoxious and drunk Scott was at our party? You know he likes to stir up trouble just to get attention.”

Jenny snorted. “And you, the one who doesn't like to make waves at all.”

She grew quiet, and Molly watched the smile fade from her face. Jenny glanced at Molly's belly like it was a car accident on the side of the road, something she knew was there but didn't want to acknowledge.

“Did you know that not one thing has changed in my old bedroom at my parents' house since I moved out?” she asked. “My horse show ribbons are still taped to the mirror. I won those in the ninth grade! They even have my old R.E.M. posters up on the wall. And how did I ever think that yellow paint with bright pink curtains was a good idea?”

Molly raised one eyebrow. “You know what I think is a good idea?” She pointed at her friend's empty glass. “Getting away from the Jenny Museum and going back to your husband. Even if it's just because your apartment is better decorated.”

“I know,” Jenny said. “I know. You're right. And I miss him so much it makes my chest hurt. But it's not going to be the same, Molly. Especially if my Dan isn't really
my
Dan.”

Molly flinched. She loved Dan like a brother. She'd never heard Jenny doubt what she had with him.

“I just want somebody to be mad at,” Jenny continued. “We've been through hell and high water with this job thing and trying to get pregnant, and then all this stuff comes out about him and some girl? I just don't get it. It was like the last straw on a really big camel's back, and it hit too close to home.”

She guffawed. “Literally! Get it? Because now I'm
at
home?”

“I get it.” Molly sighed. “And I'm betting that your gut is telling you that it's all in your head. We know Dan too well.” Molly dipped her head a little. “And Scott, for that matter. Dan probably didn't do anything worse that night than drink too much.”

“So you think I'm being a shit?” Jenny shook her head and started picking at another napkin. “I don't want to be a shit. It's just all so . . .”

“Shitty?”

“Pretty much.”

“I think you love him, that's what I think,” Molly said. “And I think you have a lot going on right now, so it's easier for you to hide than face it. But I also think it's too easy for us to feel like our current relationships are going to look exactly like the ones we grew up with.”

Jenny sighed. “You know,” she said, “I thought that going home would let me just forget it about it for a while, like I could be a kid again, and worry about somebody else's marriage instead of my own. But I guess that's the thing about being a grown-up—you can't run away from your problems when you're the one creating them. Fine. I'll call him tonight. At the very least, my parents will be thrilled to not hear me heckling Pat Sajak anymore.”

She looked at Molly with shrewd eyes. “When did you get so much common sense, anyway?” she asked. “Is impending motherhood changing you already?”

“Must be,” Molly said. “It's all that marriage-and-babies stress. Making me age more quickly.”

Jenny glanced at Molly's belly again. Molly tensed up, and pushed her glass away from her.

“Okay, I have to say it,” she said. “This is weird now, isn't it?”

“What are you talking about?” Jenny's voice was light, but she looked at Molly with eyes that belied the brave facade.