Everything We Ever Wanted (12 page)

S ylvie realized she had been leaning against the upstairs hallway console table for quite some time, clutching a small jade bear sculpture between her hands. Scott bumped around on the other side of the bathroom door, getting ready for a shower. It was silent outside now; the biblical rain must have stopped. She thought of a phrase her grandfather sometimes used to say—apres moi, le deluge. Some French guy coined it, some great leader. It meant that after he was dead, he didn’t care what mess he left behind for his country to clean up. France could be flooded or raided or crumble, and it would be okay with him—it was someone else’s problem.

I t was clear the following day, as though the world had never known rain. Joanna went out into her front yard and looked around. The world had transformed overnight. It was now green, earthy. The

sun threw heat onto her shoulders, and the wind smelled like lilacs. A UPS truck trundled down the street, the brown-suited driver’s knees and forearms bare, having shed his wintry long underwear.

Joanna called her mother and told her that Charles would be coming to Maryland, too, something that still surprised and puzzled her. Why did he want to come all of a sudden? Why the sudden interest? He’d never come before. She’d helped Catherine move to Maryland by herself, while Charles was off on some work project. She’d never burdened him to accompany her to Catherine’s medical procedures. Part of her was embarrassed to show Charles the poky little house her mother had inherited. It was bad enough bringing him into the splitlevel in Lionville, although Charles was very diplomatic about it, never remarking about the house one way or another. Another part of her just figured he wasn’t very interested in going to Maryland, in getting to know her mother. Which was fine, too. Catherine was a handful; she and Charles didn’t need to bond.

But what was wrong with Joanna—didn’t she want him to come? Her mother was, thank goodness, too distracted to detect anything was off. She’d just spoken to a friend at the sail club, a man named Robert, and was trying to get Joanna to promise that they’d make a trip there the night before the biopsy. “I’ve told him all about you,” Catherine pressed. “I’d like you to meet him.”

“Okay, okay,” Joanna answered reluctantly, wondering if Catherine and this Robert guy were dating. She’d never considered the idea of her mother having a boyfriend before.

After she hung up, she walked around the house, antsy yet aimless. Her unopened boxes mocked her, a thin layer of dust on each. The packing tape that sealed them shut was beginning to peel away from the cardboard. What did Joanna own that she wasn’t using? What if she opened a box and found something unexpected inside, something that had been wiped from her identity? Something that reminded her, maybe, of how wonderful her life used to be? Only, had it been?

A few photo albums had been unpacked and were now sitting on a bookshelf. Joanna pulled them down and sat on the couch with the stack in her lap. The spine cracked as she opened the first page of the wedding book. There they were, Joanna in her silk sheath dress that now hung in plastic in the upstairs closet, Charles in a tuxedo with his hair pushed back off his face. They stood in the gazebo in Roderick’s backyard, white flowers all around them.

He looked happy, and so did she. Except for that one shaky moment where Joanna’s mother ordered her not to screw it up, Joanna really had been happy that day. She picked up the other book that showed photos of moments before their marriage. First were pages and pages of the trip they’d taken to Jamaica before they’d gotten engaged. After a series of shots of the dazzling pool and the thatched-roof tiki huts, there was a picture of Joanna and Charles sitting on a hammock, doodling pictures in the guest journal they’d found in their room. Next was a picture of Charles holding a literal log of marijuana, at least a foot of solidly packed weed. A waiter had procured it for them for a pithily small sum of money, maybe forty or fifty dollars. They’d giggled about how easy it had been to get it, how natural their butler seemed when presenting it to them, how their families, if they knew, would be horrified that they’d done this. Well, Charles’s family. Joanna’s mother would probably ask if she could have some.

“Watch, we’ll end up in a Jamaican prison,” Charles had joked. Back in the real world, he never smoked pot, never even joints that sometimes circulated at parties. But there he did, getting so stoned he could barely move. He was different in Jamaica, not bound to the rules of his life. She was probably different, too.

Next in the album were photos of their first Christmas together, just this past year. They’d been married for three months; Charles’s father hadn’t died yet. They hadn’t moved yet either; the photos were from Charles’s apartment in the city. She’d gotten him a digital SLR camera, and he’d taken countless photos of her that day, holding up every present she’d received. A copy of the New York Times, symbolizing the weekend subscription he bought her. A running jacket and matching shorts, both pale pink. And then, one of the last photos, lacy black underwear and a matching bra. Her smile was wobbly, not sure if she should take it seriously or not, as she had considered wearing a sports bra under her wedding gown. While other women pranced around their Jamaican resort in string bikinis, thongs up their asses, Joanna wore a two-piece Speedo with thick straps and a very concealing bottom. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her body, she just wasn’t an exhibitionist. Fancy underwear always made her feel like an actor in a bad play. She thought Charles understood this about her.

But maybe there was an implicit message in the gift. Maybe it signified the kind of woman Charles wanted her to be—a sophisticate who craved fancy undergarments, good-smelling soaps, and French perfume. A woman, say, like Mrs. Cox or Mrs. Batten, like the scores of ladies at La Marquette. Made-up even to do their weekly shopping. Preened even when drinking coffee. Not a shoelace untied, not a lash unpainted. Someone who would know how to dress for a dinner party. Someone who would wear a bikini without feeling self-conscious. Someone like Bronwyn.

Was that when things had begun to falter? When Charles had given her that underwear? And was that was what was happening— were they faltering? She pressed a hand to her forehead. She was forever trying to define things these days. What had before seemed so solid was now so unclear.

T he weather was so unseasonably glorious that Charles asked Joanna to meet him in the city to go out to dinner. Joanna took SEPTA in, suddenly feeling giddy and golden. When had she and Charles last gone out to dinner—a real dinner, not the local pizza joint or the Chinese place in the strip mall? Maybe it signified a change, all their petty tension washing away.

She got off at Market East and walked to the restaurant in Old City. It was a Friday; the bar was packed and Charles hadn’t yet arrived. Joanna flagged down the bartender and ordered a glass of pinot noir, settling into her stool and looking idly around at the dramatic purple curtains against the walls and the chefs that fluttered about in the open kitchen at the back. Other guests flitted around her, ordering drinks, swilling them back, thrusting their fingers into the bowls of mixed nuts at the bar. There were men and women who came straight from work, a couple talking about their apartment in Fishtown, a woman with a daughter of about eleven or twelve, the girl gazing off disinterestedly at the passing cars on the street. Joanna suddenly realized how much she missed Philadelphia. She missed the crowds and the smells and the anonymity. She missed sitting in a bar without everyone staring at her pityingly, wondering why she was alone.

Joanna was almost halfway through her wine when she suddenly saw Charles waving at her from across the bar. Hey, he mouthed. He held a palm to the air as if to say, What are you doing all the way over there? He was standing with two other people, an almost-empty gin and tonic in his hand. The two people turned and looked, too. It was Nadine and Rob, two of Charles’s friends from Swithin who had gotten married. They lived in the city, though Joanna wasn’t sure where. Nadine wore bright red lipstick and was clutching a glass of water. She was hugely pregnant, cupping one hand over the base of her belly.

Joanna looked down, gripped with panic, wishing Charles hadn’t seen her. She didn’t want to talk to Swithin people. Not tonight. She wanted to remain on this side of the bar, safe and alone. But she picked up her glass and walked over.

“How long have you been here?” Charles asked when she reached him. His face was already pink from the gin.
“Um, twenty minutes maybe?” she answered, squeezing in beside him. There were no available stools on this side of the bar. Only Nadine was sitting.
“And you didn’t see us? I got here at six. I ran straight into these two. We’ve been here the whole time.”
“You didn’t see me, either,” Joanna said bitingly, though her words were absorbed by the din of the crowd.
“Well, now that you’re here, I can tell the hostess we’re ready,” Charles said. He considered his old friends. Rob still had his handsome, well-balanced features, but his once thick, longish hair was starting to thin. Nadine was as pale as ever, even her eyelashes. Her diamond ring kept throwing prismatic shapes all over the room. “You guys must join us,” Charles decided.
Nadine waved her hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “You guys don’t live here. Joanna probably came into the city so you could have a nice, romantic dinner by yourselves.”
“Nah, we’d love to have you,” Charles insisted. “It’ll be ages before we see you again. Right, Joanna?”
And then they were all looking at her. Joanna had no control over the muscles of her face. And now that this mood had settled around her, she couldn’t just untangle herself from it so fast. She didn’t want them joining their table. She didn’t want to struggle to make conversation. She thought of her comfy stool across the bar. She thought of her cozy couch at home. She could have stayed there and made pudding, watched television.
“Really,” she managed. “I don’t mind.”
And that was good enough for them. Nadine and Rob followed behind Charles and Joanna to a four-top at the back of the restaurant. Nadine struggled to sit down, Rob spotting her back. Diners at nearby tables glanced over and smiled. They both put their napkins on their laps and said that yes, sparkling water would be lovely. Charles gave Joanna an inquisitive look, a little eyebrow raise that seemed so say, Is everything okay? But he should know what wasn’t okay, shouldn’t he? Joanna smiled at him icily, and then turned back to her glass of wine, swilling back the rest of it fast.
They started talking about Rob’s boss—he worked at WXPN, Penn’s radio station, doing something for one of the show producers. “He made me babysit this band last week,” Rob was saying. “They were about nineteen years old but really sweet, came from some little town in Wales. What they wanted most was to see an authentic Philadelphia crime. They wanted to see guys in low-riders carjacking someone or, like, a shoot-out. They begged me to drive them into the worst neighborhood so we could see some action.” He rolled his eyes and then paused. Everyone laughed.
The conversation moved on to another story about a band Rob had dealt with, then to Charles and his job, and then to Nadine and her pregnancy. Around and around and around, though they kept skipping her. Intentionally … or by accident? She began to tune them out, watching the sous chefs scramble to and fro, mixing things, adding items to sauce pans, searing pieces of fish.
After the waiter took their orders, Rob looked at Charles. “So how’s your mom?”
Joanna snapped to attention. Charles paled. “She’s hanging in there.”
“Still doing all that stuff at the school?” Nadine asked.
Charles nodded. “Still ruling with an iron fist.”
Nadine glanced down at her menu. Rob took a sip of water. Of course they didn’t know about what had happened at the school. Not everyone’s lives circled around Swithin.
“There’s a new headmaster at Swithin, isn’t there?” Rob crossed his arms over his chest.
Charles nodded. “Jerome retired.”
“He did?” Nadine widened her eyes. “When?”
“At the beginning of this year,” Charles said.
“Wonder what the new guy’s like,” Nadine mused. “Maybe another stamp collector?”
The three of them laughed. No one filled Joanna in on the joke, so she ducked her head and took a hearty sip of wine. A stream of waiters carefully wheeled a tall chocolate cake with a single sparkler candle poking out the top to a nearby table. As they sang Happy Birthday to a beautiful older woman in a brown and white poncho, Rob and Charles began to reminisce about their days on the high-school debate team. Their coach, Gregory, would take them to an Indian restaurant in Malvern Friday nights whenever someone had a birthday. Remember the sitar player? Remember the poetry readings? Gregory took them to hear Bill Clinton, then just the governor of Arkansas and the Democratic candidate for president, speak at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Do you think he and Schuyler really had a thing?” Nadine leaned forward on her elbows.
“That never happened.” Rob shook his head. “It was just a rumor.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, some girls saw them talking and completely misconstrued it,” Charles said. “Remember?”
“Huh.” Nadine wound a pale strand of hair around her finger. “Greg always had eyes for the girls, though. Definitely Schuyler … and Bronwyn, too.”
Bronwyn. Joanna curled her toes. Charles breathed in, his face agleam. And just like that, Joanna knew he was going to bring her up. He was seriously going to talk about Bronwyn right now. Her heart pounded with resentment.
“Did you guys ever haze?” she blurted out.
Everyone stopped and looked at her. Charles clapped his mouth closed. He laid the piece of bread he’d been chewing back on his plate. “What?” Nadine said.
“On the debate team,” Joanna explained. Her mouth felt funny, way too large. “Like, for newcomers. Freshmen. Did you ever, like, make them eat toilet paper? Stand outside on a winter day in their underwear?”
“What, like in a frat?” Rob bit off the word frat, and held it tautly between his front teeth.
“Like bullying?” Nadine said at the same time.
“I guess,” Joanna answered.
“We didn’t do anything like that,” Rob said slowly, looking up at the pagoda-shaped light fixtures, as if trying to remember. “If the newcomers sucked, they didn’t debate. If they were good, they did.”
“What about on your sports teams?” Joanna asked. “Basketball? Football?”
She could feel Charles’s foot pressing down on hers. But when they were first dating, she’d explicitly told him that she didn’t like hearing about Bronwyn. It had been part of their early arguments, those first sticking points all couples needed to work through. It had been a difficult thing for her to say that to him, for she’d felt so vulnerable and petty. The conversation was still so clear to her; was it for him?
“We don’t have a football team.” Nadine said slowly, raising her shoulders.
“Wrestling?” Joanna tried.
“Joanna,” Charles growled.
He gave her a private glance. But she wasn’t going anywhere dangerous with this. She was just asking questions. “I always knew frats and sororities hazed,” Joanna said, turning to Rob and Nadine. “But I’ve been reading this article that it’s sort of prevalent in high-school sports, too.”
Nadine shook her head quickly. “Our school isn’t really like that.” “Maybe it’s more of a public school thing,” Rob volunteered sweetly. They were silent for a while, staring at their empty place settings. Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna saw Charles’s finger digging into the surface of the wooden table, as if to carve a groove. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he looked up. “So, Nadine. Are you having a shower?”
Nadine nodded, and then glanced guiltily at Joanna, who she hadn’t invited. Joanna looked down. “It’s going to be at my mother’s house,” Nadine said. “In Wayne. I’ll send an e-mail.”
“Did you track down Bronwyn again and ask her to it?” Charles asked.
Joanna breathed in sharply. Charles glanced at her, his expression eerily neutral.
“Because you guys were friends, I mean,” Charles went on. “Does she even know you’re having a baby?”
Nadine shrugged. “I haven’t heard from her. I think she’s still in Europe.”
“I thought it was South Africa,” Rob murmured.
Joanna stared hard at Charles’s ear, waiting for him to turn back to her and give her some apologetic gesture to explain himself. But Charles took another bite of bread, nodding thoughtfully. By the time he did look over, Joanna’s look had wilted into a grimace, not nearly as potent. “What?” Charles snapped quietly. He took a swallow of his drink.
She looked away. “Nothing,” she mouthed. And then the waiter arrived with their dinners. Joanna wiped her mouth on her napkin, gave the waiter a forced smile, and took her first bite of her baked chicken and haricots verts.
…